Graeme and Ngaire McIntosh celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary on February 24, 2022. Photo / Rachel Canning
Graeme and Ngaire McIntosh celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary on February 24, 2022. Photo / Rachel Canning
Long-running Taupō business owners Ngaire and Graeme McIntosh will celebrate six decades of love next week.
The couple celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary on February 24.
They say a big factor in their long marriage is that they never argue. They also acknowledge that one person takes a leading rolein defined issues such as work or home, but at the same time say they don't do anything without consulting the other.
If it weren't for the Covid-19 pandemic they would have a big party planned to celebrate their 60 years together; instead, they are planning a small celebration this year.
Family live on either side of their Huka St home, with children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren "making the place feel like a railway station at times", and they still help at the family business next door, Taupō Funeral Services.
Retired from the business many years ago, Graeme gets called now and then to do some out-of-town driving, and Ngaire organises catering for services held at the funeral home. They enjoy still being involved in a family business they took on more than 40 years ago.
They grew up in Petone, a suburb in Lower Hutt, and when they left school Ngaire completed a dressmaking apprenticeship, and Graeme completed a diploma in agriculture and took up farming in the Pohangina Valley, Manawatū.
Ngaire was a member of the Petone ladies small-bore shooting club, as was Graeme's great-grandmother, his grandmother, and his aunt.
"I would sew for all these ladies and one day Vera Hewson [Graeme's grandmother] said I should go out on my own as a dressmaker and I could run my business from a room in her home," Ngaire says.
Four years later, Graeme and Ngaire were married at St Augustine's Church in Petone on February 24, 1962, and settled into family life in the Pohangina Valley.
Graeme and Ngaire McIntosh on their wedding day, February 24, 1962. Photo / Supplied
"His family thought it wouldn't work, I was far too social to move to Pohangina, going out small-bore shooting and ballroom dancing."
The job came with a house, and their first baby Barry McIntosh was born. Two years later they moved to Martinborough "so Graeme could better himself" but disaster struck: Graeme's hand was injured at work and he was told he had to give up farming.
"The boss said we could stay in the house for six months and continued to pay Graeme's wages while we worked out what to do."
Graeme got a job in Tūrangi, concrete compression testing for the Tongariro Power Scheme. Ngaire made dresses and Grant and Karen were born.
"Barry started school in Tūrangi. I would sneak over and bring him home for lunch because he would get beaten up by the other kids," Ngaire says.
But they missed their families in Petone and moved to Ōhau, near Levin. Graeme started selling ladies' cosmetics because Ngaire was too nervous to do so.
"The ladies loved Graeme, he was always so happy. But he was fencing in the daytime and his hands were rough."
Graeme and Ngaire McIntosh celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary on February 24, 2022. Photo / Rachel Canning
Graeme painted houses, sold insurance and travelled the country selling supplies to vet clinics. Meanwhile, their fourth child, Donna, was born and the couple started taking in foster children. At one time they had nine children at home.
One day Graeme sold insurance to Ian Mark, a Levin funeral director who was suffering hydatids. Ian had lots of hospital visits ahead and asked Graeme to run his funeral home for him from time to time.
"After a while, I thought I want to buy my own funeral home," Graeme says.
The Taupō funeral home came up for sale and Graeme put down a $100 deposit, from saving his $8 lunch allowance.
In 1979 the family moved to Taupō and lived in the home above the funeral parlour, on the corner of Tūwharetoa and Titiraupenga Sts, currently the site of Asure Prince Motor Lodge.
"It was terrible, relatives would be wailing downstairs or fighting over the body, and we could hear it all in the lounge above," Ngaire says.
Heartache would follow when the Māori foster children were picked up and taken away by social services or their parents.
"One of the quirks of the law at the time was that Māori foster children were not allowed to live in a funeral home," Graeme says.
Graeme could see the site was becoming increasingly unsuitable and approached the Department of Lands and Survey about buying land at Rickit St, next to the cemetery. It was covered in weeds and old car bodies.
In the 1990s that became the new site of the funeral home. Their son Barry and his wife Kirstine now run the funeral home.
