Our Love Stories

Before the days of online dating, how did people meet their life partner? Writer and comedian Michele A’Court shares some of the wonderful and surprising - stories of Kiwi romance from her new book How We Met.

Antarctica, 2001: Ronlyn Duncan was working at Casey Station when a gang of the girls decided it would be fun to have a mock hen’s night. You make your own fun when you’re in the Arctic circles.

I volunteered to be the bride (36… desperate) and then we went about looking for a groom. My now-husband, Arthur, happened to walk through the door as we all turned our attention to who that should be, and so he was chosen. He was a willing participant. We got married at 10pm that night. I was wearing a duvet cover as a veil somehow wrapped around my head, and the station leader read out the vows that the girls had written earlier on a paper table cloth – we’d mulled it over during dinner in preparation after telling Arthur he was getting married. Thoughtfully, he arrived with rings (the usual can ring-pull but beautifully decorated with a strip of brass for me, and a brass nut for him). Having got married, we then got to know each other and the rest is history. It must have been the kiss. We did get married officially in a forest in Tasmania in 2009. The ceremony was somewhat confusing for our five-year-old daughter, as we’d always told her we had got married in Antarctica – because we did! Ronlyn Duncan, Christchurch

In the kitchen at a party, a woman with a Bic biro pinned through her hair knot (she looks interesting) and I swapped numbers.

She wrote her phone number on a teabag, the only paper to hand, knowing from experience that if you meet someone you like in London, get their number, because in a city of 12 million people you will never see them again. I called her the next day, she’s not interested. I made a cup of tea with the bag and mentally moved on, but I got a call back a few days later – married 20 years, two boys, 18 and 16. Tony Richards, Auckland