By CASEY NEILL
SUPPORT is the secret to Beverley and Frank Aarons’s 60-year marriage.
“He looks after me, I suppose, and he’s always there,” Bev said when asked what she liked most about her husband.
Frank’s answer?
“’Cause she argues with me all the time,” he said.
“We’re always there for one another.”
The Noble Park couple’s diamond anniversary celebrations in December included a trip to Albury with their daughters and grandchildren to play the pokies.
“We go over there for breakfast and we have lunch, then we have dinner,” Bev said.
“We play the pokies, we meet a lot of people we know, we listen to the bands.
“We have a wonderful time.”
Bev, 80, and Frank, 85, met the same way as many couples of their generation.
“We used to go dancing Sunday night,” Frank said.
“Opposite the Prahran Market they use to have a dance every Sunday night.
“The first night we met, I then didn’t see her for 12 months.
“Then we went to the St Kilda Town Hall dance and we met again.”
Frank was a featherweight boxer at the time – he won 30 of his 38 appearances – and on their first date took Bev to watch a bout at Festival Hall.
“He was going to take me out on a Friday night. We got on a tram – no car – and we got to town,” she said.
“I thought we were going to the pictures, and we ended up going to Festival Hall.”
Why did he decide boxing would make a good first date?
“Because he’s a very selfish man. He didn’t give any thought to where I’d like to go, he just took me where he wanted to go,” Bev said.
She was 15 when they met.
“We got married on the 17 December and I was 21 in the April, so I was a child bride,” she said.
The ceremony was at St Matthew’s Church in Prahran and Bev’s mum hosted the reception.
“We had to have it at home. Nobody had any money in them days to have flash weddings,” Frank said.
“We had 60 or 70 people at her mum’s place and we had a good time.
“We didn’t go on a honeymoon. We bought a house.”
It cost them £2150.
“Six years ago it went for over $1 million,” he said.
Frank’s boxing career ended following a motorbike crash that nearly killed him.
“I was coming home from her place after training and a drunk come out of St Edgars Road, Prahran,” he said.
“He broke every bone in the left side of my body.
“I made a comeback 12 months later but got a pain in my stomach.
“It was a duodenal ulcer. My doctor said to me ‘if you fight again you’re going to get killed. If somebody hits you, that’s it’.
“So I gave it away and started training greyhounds.
“I had the heaviest greyhound in Victoria, Jungle Bid. He was like a pony, he was.”
Bev and Frank are number one members at Sandown Greyhounds, and used to live nearby.
“We lived a couple of years up at Upper Ferntree Gully. It was beautiful up there, fresh air,” Frank said.
“It was too quiet for her.”
They’ve lived in Noble Park for the past 10 years.
“I’ve got two lovely daughters and four lovely grandchildren,” Bev said.
