Fifty years ago, Ralph and Gay Scott’s wedding featured in The Australian Women’s Weekly. On their golden anniversary, the couple shares their secrets to a long-lasting, harmonious marriage.
Half a century ago, a young man from the outer suburbs of Melbourne met a lovely young lady through a family friend.
He liked what he saw and the courtship began – after two years and many a Saturday night ball, Ralph Scott made Gay Liston his wife.
It was the happiest day of Gay’s life and one that was captured in the February 3, 1964 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Gay beams out from the yellowing pages of the old magazine, surrounded by her four junior bridesmaids, all of them dressed in white and clutching posies of flowers.
She looks absolutely radiant: a young woman in love in front of St Frances Xavier Church in Frankston, Melbourne.
The caption describes the photo as an “attractive group”, noting that Gay’s gown was “satin-backed shantung” accessorised with a “tulle veil sprinkled with jewels”.
Ralph was not pictured in the magazine, something that still confuses the couple five decades later.
“I always wondered where my photo got to that day,” Ralph says with a chuckle.
“I remember the photographer on our wedding day, ordering us here and there, telling us how to pose for the camera.
“I was getting sick of it, and wondering how I could get out of any more photos, when it clicked it wasn’t ‘I’ anymore … it was ‘we’.
“I’ve only had to remind myself of that a few times in 50 years of marriage – and I reckon that’s the secret: it’s ‘we’, not ‘I’ “
The happy couple settled in Melbourne after their wedding and have stayed in the area, except for a few stints abroad in Papua New Guinea.
Son Steve arrived in November after their wedding, and twin girls, Elizabeth and Kathryn, arrived two years later.
“I remember Dad being this calming influence on the house,” Steve says. “Whenever he came home from work, he would kiss Mum first, then us kids. He treated her like a Princess.
“He used to say that he would rather live in a tent with all of us, than a house without his family.”
Steve says his parents are still very much in love, as was evidenced 18 months ago.
“Dad had prostate cancer, and as he lay in the hospital bed, with Mum sitting by his side, he became very romantic with her,” Steve says.
“Mum’s very private, so she was mortified that this was happening in front of me, but it just shows me how their love has lasted. They have certainly been great role models for me.”
Gay and Ralph Scott at their granddaughter’s 21st birthday party last year
For Ralph’s part, he worries modern generations take their vows too lightly.
“I look at youngsters today, and they are not prepared to give that commitment,” he says. “They want the wedding, not the marriage and are always willing to divorce.
“There’s nothing magical about it: we work together and we respect each other.
“For our 25th anniversary, the kids hired a big marquee in the backyard and I asked Gay if she’d marry me again. Thankfully she said yes.
“This anniversary, I’ve had all her rings resized, because arthritis was stopping her from wearing them.
“I’d like to ask her again if she’d be my wife … hopefully her answer will still be the same.”
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