A COUPLE who met after a chance encounter on a Jersey road have celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.
“I always joke that I was picked up off the road,” laughed 91-year-old Natalie-Jean Jeanne, who married her husband Marcel at St Andrew’s Church in St Helier in 1956.
She recalled walking home from chapel with a friend one Sunday morning when two young men passed them in a black car.
“My friend and I were walking back from chapel one Sunday morning, and these two lads passed in a black car,” said Mrs Jeanne.
“I knew the driver, but I said to my friend, ‘Who’s he got with him tonight? I don’t recognise him.’
“About twenty minutes later, they came back the other way and asked, ‘Would you like to come for a ride?’
“Now, my friend never stuck with the driver, but I became friends with the passenger, Marcel, and we got engaged two years later.”
The couple married on a windy and showery day but managed to avoid the worst of the weather.
“On the day of our marriage it was windy, and we had showers,” recalled Mrs Jeanne.
“But we managed to dodge the rain – I think when we got to the reception it came down – so we were very lucky.”
During their seven decades together, the couple ran a farm in Trinity, raised three children and helped to raise four grandchildren. More recently, they have welcomed the “joy” of two great-grandchildren.
Their farming life began despite a stern warning from Mr Jeanne’s father – a French-born farmer who had 20 siblings and moved to Jersey after falling in love with a local woman.
“My dad often said, ‘Marcel, it’s up to you. If you marry this girl, she’s not a farmer’s daughter. The way you make your bed, you’ll then have to sleep in it.’”
Although Mrs Jeanne had no agricultural experience, the couple started with just £100 and built a successful farming enterprise.
“It’s been a hard life; a very busy, hectic life,” she said. “We had animals, we had some pigs, and some cows, and we had some chickens, and then we started growing.
“We grew mostly for export cauliflowers, Jersey Royal potatoes, parsley, flowers, daffodils, irises – they mostly went to London by mail boat.
“I didn’t know anything about farming, but I can tell you, I learnt a lot damn quickly in 18 years.”
Mr Jeanne, who turns 94 later this year, said: “We’ve had our ups and downs, but we kept together and we sorted ourselves out, and we worked together.
“My wife had no agricultural experience at all, and she got to learn to drive the tractor in the pouring rain with the harvester and the potatoes.”
For 29 years, the couple also helped with weddings as members of the Jersey Horse Driving Society.
“When we were doing weddings, and collecting the bride, or her dad, in a horse and carriage and taking them to the church, that was enjoyable,” said Mrs Jeanne.
They raised their family in a bungalow on Les Platons “with a view over all of the French coast” and later bought an adjoining field, where they kept a horse and built a stable.
“It was lovely watching the squirrels and the birds and the rabbits, and all of those wild things – climbing up the trees and chasing each other: we had four squirrels at one time,” said Mrs Jeanne.
The couple now live together at Lakeside Care Home in St Peter, where their family held an anniversary party for them on Wednesday.
The celebrations included a cake made by their granddaughter Kirstie, founder and head chef of Flour Patisserie, and a letter from the King.
“To this day, we are enjoying life to the full,” said Mr Jeanne. “She’s 91, and I’m 93, about to be 94, and we’re still together. I don’t think you get that very often.”
“You’ve got to take the good and the bad, but she still loves me, and I still love her,” he added, turning to his smiling wife and giving her a kiss.
