Sceptics gave this East End couple?s marriage six weeks to three months to survive ? but they are still very much in love and will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary tomorrow.

Thelma and Chesley (Sonny) Foggo have certainly had their ups and downs over the years, but are glad that they stayed together through thick and thin.

The couple came from a legacy of marriages, which lasted for more than 50 years each on both sides.

Mrs. Foggo, 73, and Mr. Foggo, 70, first met when she was a maid and when he filled in as a driver for the same household.

Smiling as if it were yesterday, Mr. Foggo said: ?We hit is off right away.

?In those days when you fell in love with a lady you just went along and married her.

?It wasn?t one of those things were her father had a gun to your head.

?When she saw me, she saw this handsome guy and she figured she?d get her claws into me. I just blew her mind.?

Mrs. Foggo said when she saw him for the first time she just knew he was the one.

?Everyone in Bailey?s Bay would say ?Here comes you white man? and he loved to wear white shirts,? she said.

?I had said, I had dated a black man and the next one was going to be Portuguese or white. He was neither, he was a St. David?s Islander.?

After Mr. Foggo proposed, he took her by sea to Bethel Church on North Shore Road to see the priest.

?I didn?t have any transportation except my little punt with a Seagull engine on the back,? said Mr. Foggo, who, weather permitting, still fishes every Saturday.

?I picked her up in Bailey?s Bay and we carried right along up north shore. I docked along side the rocks near Shelly Bay and we walked up the hill to see the minister.

?He told us the only day he had available was the first day of Cup Match, which was July 29.?

The lovebirds said this was the first time in 50 years that their wedding anniversary has fallen on the first day of Cup Match.?

They decided to get married and Mr. Foggo said the minister said ?You must really want to marry this woman?.

The couple had an intimate wedding with a few friends and family members there to celebrate their commitment to one another.

?The ring I bought for her cost 30 shillings and I told her I spent a lot of money on her and she has to hang around for another 50 years,? Mr. Foggo said.

?At the time I was only making about ?3/18 shillings a week. In those days money was scarce. It was pounds, shillings and pence.?

On their wedding day, Mrs. Foggo kept her future husband waiting so long that he wondered whether she was coming or not.

He said: ?I waited so long, that me, my best man, my cousin with his taxi, and the minister were all round the backside of the church near the vestry listening to cricket.?

Mr. Foggo, who is the caretaker at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, said his best man was saying it was getting hot and he wanted to have a drink and asked where was the woman he was supposed to marry.

Mr. Foggo said he and the other men were ready to leave when the minister asked where they were going.

?I was ready to go back to St. David?s,? said Mr. Foggo. ?But I am glad I waited. She was worth waiting for.?

Mrs. Foggo, who still works in the housekeeping department at Grotto Bay Hotel, said: ?I was outside of the church and he was outside listening to the cricket.?

That year Somerset won the cricket at the 1954 Cup Match. When asked what team Mr. Foggo supported, he said: ?Somerset. I?m a Somerset boy.?

Mrs. Foggo, nee Fubler, said most all St. David?s Islanders were Somerset fans.

?All St. David?s Islanders at the games wear red and blue, because St. George?s and St. David?s are so far apart.?

For their honeymoon they went out on a boat for a day.

Mr. Foggo said: ?It was definitely fun days. Today these guys don?t know how to have a wedding $25,000 to $30,000 and it doesn?t even last.

?When people get married these days I tell them I?ll buy them a present if they last.

?A couple of girls from the biostation got married and I told them I?ll get you a gift on your first anniversary.

?Sometimes it doesn?t even last a year and you just waste your money.

?I want to see how it works out.?

The couple, who often finish each other?s sentences, said in spite of the hard times that marriage can bring, stuck it out.

?We just worked it out,? said Mrs. Foggo, ?I went home and my mama asked me, who did I marry, so I went back home to Sonny and we worked it out.

?My mama thought the world of Sonny, he could do nothing wrong and I couldn?t say anything bad about him.?

But unlike her family, some people were not blessing their union and they predicted that ?she?ll be going back to Baileys Bay in a minute ? six weeks to three months at the most?.

Mr. Foggo said sometimes it was really difficult because the old St. David?s Islanders preferred their own kind and his aunts wanted to know why he was marrying a black girl.

?They didn?t like black people,? said Mr. Foggo.

Mrs. Foggo said she was quite saucy and said she could hold her own when she would suffer abuse, she gave as good as she was given.

Mrs. Foggo said: ?One day a woman that I knew called me up and told me that Sonny was in a bar with another woman.

?I said hold on one minute and I handed the phone to Sonny he said hello. She hung up and hasn?t called back since.

?It wasn?t always easy for us ? they were mischief making.?

They said on a few occasions they stopped speaking for a few weeks because of rumours about one another.

?And that was the hardest thing, but once you can get through those battles, you can conquer anything,? said Mrs. Foggo.

Mr. Foggo said he knew that whoever he married would have to come from another part of the Island.

?I knew that I would never marry a girl from St. David?s,? he said, ?People had so many children and they could have been my first cousin or my half sister. Some fellows had ten to 15 children spread all over St. David?s. And a couple of old couples had 15 or 16 children and they were never married.

?I knew she had to come from somewhere else on the Island.?

The couple, who have four daughters and two sons, have 16 grandchildren and seven great-grand-children, said they don?t date anymore.

?We travel together,? said Mrs. Foggo. ?He didn?t like travelling before and would never go with me. But now he does.?

They are planning an Alaskan cruise for their next jaunt.

Although Mr. Foggo loves cricket, Mrs. Foggo said she would go to games and rarely knew who were the victors.

?I don?t know who I was for,? she said. ?I would go to Cup Match and come back and ask who won the game. I never saw the game.?

Mr. Foggo said he doesn?t venture far from home for cricket games anymore.

?I only go to the County Games if they are playing in St. David?s,? he said.

And Mrs. Foggo said he would take her to Bailey?s Bay cricket and sit off in the boat rather than come up to the game and then take her home in the boat.

The couple say Cup Match has changed over the years.

?People used to dress up they wore a tie, Daks and women wore their hats,? they said. ?Now it?s ridiculous. We don?t go Cup Match ? not now.?

The other day my mate was saying 50 years with one woman ? ?I couldn?t stay with one woman for 50 years?, he had said.

But Mr. Foggo said: ?I would do it all again if I could find the same woman.?