Grace said “the love is still there” after 60 years of marriage.
By Mara Pattison-Sowden
GEORGE and Grace Ismail met after a chance encounter at a dance in Melbourne in 1948 and the Don Valley couple celebrated 60 years of marriage this month.
George came out to Australia from Albania at the age of 19 and began market gardening with his family in the Yarra Valley.
He was out on the town at the Exhibition Building in Melbourne when he saw Grace from across the room.
“We were the only young people at this old timers’ dance,” he said.
They had a date at Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens the next day and made more plans to meet.
But Grace didn’t turn up to the next one, and sent a girlfriend to tell George that she was sick.
“He didn’t believe her so he took a taxi to see me,” Grace said.
“I had the mumps and wasn’t allowed out.”
On future dates George took the train into the city or Grace visited Launching Place accompanied by her two nieces.
“I needed chaperones. They were protecting their aunt from the big bad boy from the bush,” Grace said.
After courting for two years, Skender George Ismail married Dorothy Grace Campbell on 10 June 1950 at the Presbyterian Church in Richmond.
They now have two sons, Kasem and Shain, four grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
The Ismails retired in the Don Valley after George finished working the market gardens with his family.
Grace said the recipe to surviving 60 years together is compromise.
“George and I just hold hands and reminisce about the past and the love is still there,” she said.
