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In love since she was 13: Woman married for 40 years is proof you don’t need a grand proposal

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  • After reading a W24 article about a disappointed woman whose boyfriend proposed by changing his Facebook status to "engaged," a W24 reader, Mariana Naude, shares her story.
  • Mariana's proposal (or rather, marriage discussion), by today's standards, would most likely be regarded as one of the worst ever marriage 'proposals'.
  • Based on her own charming love story, Mariana believes if we were to measure the potential success of a marriage by the proposal, we may miss out on marital bliss.
  • This is her story.

We met as teens in high school — he was 16, and I was 13 — and were very much in love from day one. Life developed and unfolded, but we stuck together through thick and thin.

We always knew that one day we would get married. And when I was 19, we decided we should just go ahead and get married. I think it was more a push from my side, rather than from his.

READ MORE: Love and coronavirus: It could bring you closer, but there's a risk of increased domestic violence

However, being that young, we did not have the money to get engaged. So one day, while helping my mother tidy her bedroom closet, I found her first engagement ring. The ring was without a diamond, but the setting was platinum. 

I thought we could get a diamond for the ring, and voilá, we had an engagement ring. My boyfriend (now husband), let me go ahead with my idea and scraped the money together for a diamond. I had the diamond set at a jewellery store not far from the place where I worked.

Then one day, while I was at work, he phoned me to say the jeweller phoned to say I could fetch the ring. And that was it. We were engaged from the moment I put the ring on my finger at the jewellery store — on my own.

READ MORE: 'Moments before I got married a smoke grenade splashed a purple stain on my dress’ - A Capetonian's wedding

I remember how I walked down the road back to my workplace, looking at how beautifully the sun's rays made the diamond shine. And I felt happy and sad at the same time.

Our story has a happy ending though. We got married a year later and are still married today, almost 40 years later. The engagement ring was stolen years ago, and it was never replaced.

Do you have an interesting love story to share? Tell us about it here.

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