Car Cast #2: Our Marriage Is Simple,But Getting There Wasn't

On this episode, we’re talking about our dating journey, the challenges we faced before getting married, and why the road to marriage wasn’t as simple as it may seem. While our marriage today feels simple and grounded, getting here took patience, commitment, and navigating a few obstacles along the way.

Join us as we share our story, reflect on our dating years, and discuss what helped us build the foundation for the marriage we have today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If someone said to you, Bab, I'm gonna pay 500,000 Rand, if you could A, well, if you could just let me basically kiss your wife, would you A say yes? B say definitely no or C, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Who's offered you this 500,000 Rand?

SPEAKER_00 0:19

No, this is just like a random person. I have an answer in my head. I have one already.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Yo, this is a to- like, I obviously why are you even thinking about it? No, because I'm like, what is the like if it's just like a peck on the cheek, I'd be like, okay, that's no, kiss your wife.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Like make out.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Like make ah no. Yeah. No.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

That's not like Oh, yeah. Not like integrated like.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

I'd be like, oh, I can get over that. If it's just like a peck. Like a peck or like a small kiss.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

I couldn't. I'm too like.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Hey?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

I couldn't. I'd say no on all aspects. On all aspects, you'd say no. Yeah, even if the money's for home, no, we marry.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

You're out.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

We marry.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

You're out. I bet you though, I bet you though there are people that are listening going, I take the money, take the money, get over it.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

I couldn't. I would never be able because I sit next to you in bed.

unknown 1:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

And like I we must respect each other on all aspects.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

So I know some of you have probably taken like four, ten years to get married, but how how long do we take to get married, babe?

SPEAKER_01 1:20

I think it was like a week or something.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

That was like It was six months. No, a year.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Like nine months.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Nine months. Nine months. But not nine, it wasn't nine months from when it was nine months from when we started dating.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yes. So I think in all like all together, it was about a year and a bit. But who's counting? I don't even remember exactly the Exactly, like the age difference.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

I don't think about that. Like if you start thinking about time and and that becomes something that you obsess over, that's a problem. So I don't think of it that way. I just think of like every day as a blessing.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

No, 100%. I think we the one thing we struggled with though back then was I hated saying okay, I disliked saying boyfriend. There was something about boyfriend.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

That seemed cheap.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Yeah. It was that kind of like a two a team rank.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

It's like all we had was more than being boyfriend and girlfriend.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

And you didn't like the term associated with it. So because I think we had been through so many situations where we had girlfriends and boyfriends respectively. So we knew that feeling wasn't the same. And that didn't that didn't click. Like it didn't feel right.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Damn, people ask, uh, so your boyfriend, I'd be like, no, my partner.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Yes, I remember you saying that.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Partner's so much better than saying, my boyfriend.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Yeah, boyfriend, uh boyfriend and girlfriend is a bit of a sort of especially especially when you get older, it becomes a bit of a like a high school mentality sort of term. There needs to be something more. There needs to be something in between girlfriend and wife. So you you nailed it, I think, a partner.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

We're mingler.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Maybe like uh minglers. Like, yeah, we're ming we're minglers. That's that's all we are.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

There just needs to be a new word for stop in the dictionary. No boyfriend and girlfriend.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Okay, what would the word be? Come, let's find a word.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Okay, let me think.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

I want to call it we're in a we're in a love ship. God, that's cheesy. Oh, that's terrible.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Sounds like you like your dad just came up with that word for the city. Oh, it's awful ship.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

No, I sorry. No.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

I think we should drop that one thing.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

So go out bombing and comedy. That was terrible. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

So Peter was actually so happy when we were planning our wedding. I did not have a Cinderella wedding.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

No, you didn't.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

And we were It's not I, it's our wedding, actually. I didn't really feel like paying for us to be putting in money towards this big budget to pay for people to come get drunk, eat my food.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Listen, I've been down that road before.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

So I knew how this all panned out. And sure, I mean, there are women that want to have that big day, and that's Yes, and there's nothing wrong with this.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

There's nothing wrong with this. Nothing wrong with this.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Go ahead, have your big day. Just know that there are people that are there that you'll probably never associate or see again. And you invite them out of obligation to, for whatever whatsoever reason, work, family, and then you look at your account or the or whoever's paying looks at their kind of going, Oh my word. Yeah, that's it. I spent all that money. And it doesn't matter if you go, oh, but we made it a cash bar tap. The venue, the food, it's still all gonna add up regardless.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

So our wedding together was so it was expensive still because we still had things we had to pay for.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Of course, but it was spiritually right. It felt spiritually humble.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Yes, so that's a good one. Yes. So we had only close friends and family, and I think about say three people that were there, and that was it. We had a little bit of drinks after the ceremony. It was such a beautiful ceremony, lots of tears. It was something that I could remember to saying in my head that it was worth it.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Super simple, super, yeah, like I said, it was it was focused on the people that mattered most, and it was focused on being what a marriage should be, which is the ceremony. And then again, I mean there's some people who treat it as like, oh, this is gonna be an all-out occasion for the bride to because I don't think really the the groom grooms generally don't care that much for standing out and being like, oh, look at me, I had the big wedding, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

No, I think these days like they get quite ambtimized.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

You think so?

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yes. Because honestly, I am envious of people who have big weddings, but I wouldn't want to do it. I love the aesthetic and what how much effort they put into it and what they plan with the wedding plan, and like I love that whole vibe. Like, say me to Italy, make a big wedding, but minus the expenses, like I love the idea.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

It's the preparation of getting a wedding band. Yes, and like deciding on what's gonna how it's gonna turn out and then seeing the end results and then being like, I've just put on a show and the show was successful.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Right, but like let's now.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

No, no, no, but I mean it like like like when I say show, I don't mean like show off. I mean like you've put on a production and been like Mr. and Mrs. did a good job on their day.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Okay, I understand. Because also that performance or production, like you said, not production, but it's for a video. And I love the wedding videos. I know you might be like, oh, what's the video for? But it's so cool for Instagram to look back on. I've seen so many wedding videos where I'm like, oh my gosh, in our 10-year anniversary, I want this.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

So we said in our 10-year anniversary, we're not having like a wedding, but we're gonna have a little party. Soiree.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

We're gonna get down to it. We're gonna turn up, which is nice.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

We're gonna put on that performance that we didn't put on. Yes, for our first for our actual wedding.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Which I think it makes sense because the first one I'm like I wanted to be now our wedding, we had it in our church, and I had actually been going there previously years before with my mom, and was an Anglican church right on the beach, which was it was beautiful. Because also the priest that was marrying us, he we had counseling sessions with him before, so we couldn't just walk onto the altar, say the vows. We actually had to go through a process before getting married on the day.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

They wanted to make sure that this wasn't a shotgun marriage, essentially. Or because you were pregnant when we got married. And so they were like, We don't we we want to make sure this is not just a guy who's going, ah, I've got to I've got to just do this for the sake of being in a marriage, and they wanted to make sure that we were right for each other before we got the blessing of the church. It didn't even it it even went further than the priest because we actually we had to go see the archdeacon who had to give his blessing after he interviewed us. So that was kind of hectic. I mean that felt like a like a job interview almost, but he was super cool. He was super cool, and he did say he's like, just remember, sex is super important in a marriage. That was that was the weirdest thing for me to hear from a priest, and he was like, never let that one slide. Never let that slide. And I was like, my man.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Oh my gosh. He wanted to make sure that when coming when Pete was coming out of this divorce, that I wasn't like a mistress or anything. And so they wanted to first assess the situation, and with our priest that married us, he was just also asking.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

And it was four years, so four or five.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Oh yes, before anyone thinks anything. Um this is way down the line. Yes. So I'm it's nothing like you think.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Go listen to podcast one for the updates if you missed.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

We had I think about four sessions with our priest, and after those four sessions, then we went to the archdeacon.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

And then after I wanna I want to say that's the right I don't think that's the right word. But he was like like the bishop, maybe?

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Not the bishop, that's the you know what was so scary. So we had organized the wedding. So everything was done. We organized, we sent out the invites and everything for everyone to come, the food. Not the food, but we just prepped a lot of the stuff and my dress and your suit. Then we didn't get a set day. They hadn't given us a day to be to confirm that we're gonna get married on, because we were still waiting on the approval from the archdeacon, which was actually quite stressful because we were saying, what about if he says no? What are we gonna do? Are we gonna go to another priest?

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Okay, archdeacon is completely the wrong word, I think.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Okay, we're gonna just say we're gonna just say higher priest for now. Yes. Okay. The higher priest hadn't responded back to us. At that point, we were thinking that we were gonna actually just go to a normal Christian church and get married. We didn't want to have Gigi out of wedlock. I didn't know this about the date thing. Did I didn't I told you.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

I'm sure you did.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

We didn't make like a big uh we didn't stay there for too long after the wedding.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

We'll shoot up some of those photos for you guys.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

It was actually such a it was such cute photos. Uh more my friend actually took it. She also took my maternity photos. After the wedding, we stayed there for about two hours and I was so pregnant. Like eight months pregnant at that time, so we went to a game reserve after and we called it quits. He had to go back to work the next week.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Well, we called it quits in terms of we didn't call it call it quits, but it makes it seem like oh we that's it, we were over.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

No, we called it quits.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

We called it quits in terms of like the ceremonial stuff.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Yes, sorry. Because I have to get back to work and do you think that any of your friends had doubts of me?

SPEAKER_01 10:41

100%. I had many friends that came to me.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

He was like, I'm worried about like you marrying Tash.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

100%. They were like, I don't know. I don't know what you're thinking, bro. I don't know. This is and I just knew in my heart. I was like, I'm old enough to to know what I want. I've been through the ringer. I know this is different. So talk about the first time that you and I went on like a date date together was on a cruise ship. There were a lot of people from work there, and there were a lot of important people, and Ash and I hadn't yet set our boundaries. We were in a then situation ship.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

That was just messy back then.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, it was just a messy-specific-specific, like, hey, you want to go out and meet for a night kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

I didn't know what I wanted back then.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yeah, yeah. I ended up getting so drunk that I fell into the pool of the cruise ship. Like I had to get pulled out by this 80-year-old grandma. I just remember slipping and falling, and all my colleagues saw me, and it was the most I wasn't even there.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

I don't even know where I was.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

So I ran as soon as I hit that pool, I ran straight. That's so many. I was I was like, What have I done?

SPEAKER_00 11:50

You woke up so quick.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Yo, it was so bad. I don't want anyone to see me.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

I think he's running on like all the levels for of the ship to go find me a pizza slice. Yeah. Shame. And he was like in his pajamas running around, I was just crying because I was hungry.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

A terrible, terrible moment. I even remember remember coming back to work and people were like, Pete, like, what's going on? Like, I think you need to check yourself. Things things hit a low before they had to pick up again. And that was just one example.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Imagine I'm probably I'm that's how I looked younger than how I do now. Probably like I have a baby then.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Oh, we can share a video of that. I'll give you a videos of you.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

No, actually, I don't look that bad.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

I think it wasn't like no one no one looked at us as like weirdly. It was just, oh, there's definitely an age gap between two of them.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Let me tell you how I found I was pregnant. So Pete actually was staying in from work that day and he was sick, thank God. And I think this was about six months and being into our relationship. And I said to Pete, oh, the one morning I'd taken my vitamins and we were on our on our way to um his work, and I would we'd use your carpool and I'd use the car during the day because I'd need to go to run some errands. And throughout that period, I was like, in that morning, I vomited. We started wimpy, and I went quickly to the bathroom. And after I went, I was like, oh, that's weird, I never vomit. And then I think it was the evening, I think two nights later, I just said to him, It's funny, like, imagine if I'm pregnant. Then I won the one day I went to Gateway and I said, Let me just go take a pregnancy test. I have never been in such shock in my life in the bathroom. I was like, There's no way. And I went from the bath and went and bought like three more, went and like tried it, and I I couldn't even drive the way I was shaking. I was actually gonna call Pete to come and pick me up and drive. And then I told Pete Pete was happy, but he was calm.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

There was not one part of me that went, This is a problem.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah, no, not one second you were like that. No, I was I was scared.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Were you? Yeah, I didn't sense it. I mean, I I sensed like there was anxiety.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

There was, but I was fine, but then I was like, you're like going at yourself something to calm yourself down and I felt better.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Shame you got me um a pre-baby gift. He was like, just go and something nice and we can go out for dinner. Which I think made me feel like it was more of a celebration.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Yeah, it was a celebration. Yeah. Growing a family should be celebrated. We were into our relationship far enough to be like, this is this will work.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

You know what is actually one of the things like I'm thinking about now that I was stressed about when PG came along was telling it to Kiki and Renzo.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Really?

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Yeah, because they were warming up to me or some new woman in your life.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Relatively.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Yes. But I mean they liked you from the get-go, they did. It's also like their kids being protective over their dad.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

We're so chilled. They were they ended up being so happy. And now they have the best relationship. Dynamic just works.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Have you been finding our expenses this month so far? Compared to the previous months, how we've been doing.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

I haven't checked their culture.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Oh my gosh. When you say that, it always be like I haven't I haven't.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

I'm on a I'm just like out of sight, out of mind. And then I'll look and I'll freak out. I know we talk about this, we we spoke about it before.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

It happens all the time. And then I look like the bad guy, but I haven't been doing anything.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Dramatic.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Well, I have I actually never do. It's just that I'm just buying things for the home consistently.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

That needs to be bought.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

People drive like maniacs in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

And how have you been finding this carpool situation?

SPEAKER_01 15:26

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

It's nice, eh?

SPEAKER_01 15:28

It is nice. I love the time that we get to spend talking. Because when I get home, you know that that's like my sacred time. But that's another thing. Like, I love the fact that you and I can have this understanding that after a long day, we can meet each other, we can have like our small conversation and catch up, and then be like, all right, let's divert and let's do what we want to do in order to unwind and relax. Because it's been a long day. You've had like responsibilities, you've had Gigi to look after, you've had to take care of the home. And I've come home from meetings and stress, hateful environments, and you know, fights just on a normal business basis. And uh that takes its toll. And then we respect each other's boundaries, and we know that we're gonna come back to each other eventually and talk. And we have our date nights.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Just going to see Pete's friend that he hasn't seen in many, many, many years.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Thirty four years.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Which is so long.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

No, thirty-three years.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Gosh guys, I'm not even like 30.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

33 years, I've known him. He was my he was my best man, and he would have been my best man at our wedding. Uh, but he was in Canada.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

And I've never met him.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yeah. This is the first time you're gonna meet him, which is amazing. I can't wait. Such a cool guy. He's like the quintessential gentleman. He is like the ultimate gentleman.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

I'm excited to meet him. Thanks for tuning into our little chit-chats. And guys, I appreciate we appreciate every single one of you for listening. So, in our next one, we'll be talking to you about our three beautiful little kitties Mr. Boy, that's Renzo Keeks, our oldest daughter and Titi, our baby girl. And as well as we'll be talking about how we introduced our marriage, our journey, and as well as in our age gap to our family. And guys, I'll see you in the next one.