David Schembri speaks to Jane and Ray Galea, whose love started when they were sixteen and to date shows no sign of losing its sweetness.

In March 1973, an enterprising 16-year-old Fgura boy called Ray Galea organised a hike for him and his friends on the feast of St Joseph. It wasn’t just the love of the countryside that led him to this pursuit, however.

Attending a boys-only school meant that his chances of mingling with the opposite sex were rather limited.

“I wanted us to be mixed, to make it interesting. I don’t think we ever went on a boys-only hike, as we wanted to meet girls,” Ray, now 57, says.

Across the table from him is Jane. She was 15 at the time, and Ray’s sister, with whom she shared a summer job, had invited her to this hike her brother was organising. Jane took one of her sisters along.

The two met for the first time, and the long walk gave them ample time to speak about their backgrounds – Ray has two siblings, Jane has ten – and what music they liked – Marc Bolan, David Cassidy, Gary Glitter.

“But why, of all those girls, did you choose me that day?” Jane asks him.

Our first kiss happened following a dentist appointment

Following up on their encounter at the hike, Ray’s sister told Jane that he wished to meet her again. That was to prove to be difficult: “During the day I could go wherever I wanted, but I had to forget meeting during the evenings,” Jane reminisces.

Not to be deterred, Ray availed himself of another public holiday to get another shot at meeting his love interest, and organised another hike.

“I asked my father if I could go, but he said I couldn’t make a habit of going on hikes,” Jane says. “There was always something to do around the house, or in the fields. May was also the time for harvesting potatoes.”

Ray was left high and dry, but didn’t give up. The next time they met was a chance encounter in Valletta, where because of the company they were in they couldn’t speak much. He even turned up at a union meeting in Valletta that he knew Jane would be attending.

The 1970s were a time where Carnival was organised in May, and on May 17 the two finally met again. “He’d told me he wanted us to keep seeing each other,” Jane says.

“One of my sisters had told me I was too young to start going out with someone seriously. I had gone out on dates previously, and even though I was young, I knew enough not to go out with someone again if we didn’t click. Ray was different. He was funny, he had a nice character...”

“I was handsome,” he chips in.

“Obviously, he caught my eye.”

While Ray was upfront about his goings about with his parents – they had even given him a lift to the Carnival festivities, where they met Jane for the first time – Jane had to make up an excuse or another to meet Ray. One of these included a visit to the dentist’s.

“Our first kiss happened following a dentist appointment. We went to the Barrakka Gardens after,” Jane says, looking at Ray to see if they agreed on that version.

That kiss was the first of many. The two stuck together, and in five years, they were married.

“Marriage came naturally,” Ray says.

“We used to tell each other we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. We’d discuss baby names, mostly girls’ names... Melissa, Melanie-Jane,” Jane says.

The pair got engaged, a ceremony which was marked by three pictures – a picture of Jane with the priest, taken by Ray; a picture of him with the priest taken by her; and a group photo taken in a studio.

The wedding, on July 1, 1978, was held at the Peace Lab in Ħal Far, because the church in Birżebbuġa was already booked, and they wanted to time the ceremony to fit in with the reception, held at a local hall.

Costing a few hundred liri, it was a small affair, attended mostly byfamily.

“We didn’t really have friends we went out with; because we met so young, we never had the time to go out with friends,” Ray says.

Their first house was a rented first-floor apartment in Qajjenza. The two had wanted to buy a place in Birżebbuġa, but the strong rental market, fuelled by British servicemen living here, meant no one was selling.

The first property they bought was a second floor flat in Żurrieq Road, Birżebbuġa. After some months, two became three, as Jane fell pregnant with her first child, who couldn’t be called Melissa or Melanie-Jane. So the two chose Malcolm, inspired by a Scottish couple they knew.

“I kept on working four months into my pregnancy, which was something which wasn’t really done in those days,” Jane, who been working since she left school, says.

They were 22 when Malcolm (the same Malcolm Galea who is a familiar name for theatre-goers) was born. His birth marked the start of Jane’s stint as a housewife as, two years, nine months later, their second son Jonathan (today a designer) was born.

“It was good we had kids at a young age. We all grew up together, and at one point they were like our brothers – even though we were always parents to them.

“We only had two kids – so when they left, they left. But now we’re lucky to have grandchildren – Ethan and Callum,” Jane says.

As the family grew, it moved from one house to another. They moved from the flat in Żurrieq Road to an apartment in Bluebell Street, Fgura, then back again to Birżebbuġa in a second-floor apartment in St Joseph Street.

The move following that was somewhat more substantial – in 1989, the young family moved to Rochester in Victoria, Australia, where two of Jane’s brothers lived, and where Ray – who had previously worked in the dockyards – found a good job working in a company dealing in high-pressure vessels.

“We originally wanted to go to England. We used to go there on holiday, and we liked it. I have three sisters living there,” Jane says.

Having been accepted for a job in the UK and after scouting around for a school for his boys and a house for the family, Ray was told he would not receive a work permit to live there.

“You can imagine how I felt,” he says.

Returning to Malta, Jane’s brother was here on holiday from Australia and he told them to forget the UK and head Down Under.

“In six months we were living there. Our parents were in shock,” Ray reminisces.

That move only lasted four years. While Ray was happy living on the outback as long as he had a job, the two felt that their kids weren’t being given the best upbringing there, and with life in Melbourne not appealing to Ray, they moved back to Malta.

The move was hastened by the news that Ray’s grandfather had died, and the two started missing more their family back home, particularly since Jane’s father had a stroke.

“That it was the right choice was confirmed by our kids – they never bothered to go back,” Ray says.