Golden years

Marianne and Rudi Kintzel are a generation apart in age but the things they’ve found in common have melted the years between them, as Linda Peatling discovers.

He grew up in the war-torn Germany of the 1940s; she grew up in the carefree Australia of the 1970s. He listened to news on the wireless; she watched ‘The Brady Bunch’ on TV. When she was born, he was 31. At first glance Rudi and Marianne Kintzel could be mistaken for father and daughter, and indeed they have been. “The ironing lady once came to drop off our ironing and said, ‘I’ve got your father’s shirts’,” laughs Marianne. “She nearly died when I said, ‘You mean my husband’s shirts’.”

It’s a mistake 37-year-old Marianne and 68-year-old Rudi have learned to accept and forgive over the 15 years since they became a couple. “It’s always a little bit awkward because people do see the cliché, but it doesn’t bother us because we know that what we have is real,” says Marianne. “Women sometimes think I’m a gold digger but Rudi’s not rich so that’s usually put to bed fairly quickly!” 

“It’s only natural I suppose,” adds Rudi. “I’ve even done it myself – I’ll see an older man with a younger woman and say, ‘Look at that silly old fool’ and then I realise that people are probably saying that about me!”

Frustratingly for the couple, the way they met also smacks of a cliché... “I was applying for a job with a wine company and Rudi was conducting the interviews,” Marianne explains with a smile. “And I must admit I thought he was gorgeous from the start... He was very handsome and such a gentleman – I think I developed a bit of a crush on him right away.”

For Rudi however, the opposite was true, at least at first. “I didn’t even want to employ her,” he says. “I thought she was well presented but much too young and inexperienced for the role.” As a result, Rudi rejected Marianne but she was determined to get the job – it would mean a big career move for the then 23-year-old. She continued to harass Rudi to give her a chance and, in the end, he gave in. “She rang me relentlessly so I thought, ‘Perhaps this girl does have what it takes to succeed in sales’,” he laughs.

At 54, Rudi had had considerable life experience. He’d travelled the world working for large companies, had married, raised a family and been divorced. He owned his own property and was leading a relatively solitary life. On the other hand, Marianne’s adult life was just beginning. She’d only been in the workforce for a few years, had been married for four years, had no children, and had just started repaying her first mortgage.

Nevertheless, when the pair began working together a mutual respect soon developed, and transcended the years between them. “I soon realised I’d misjudged this girl,” says Rudi. “I was somewhat prejudiced against young people then but Marianne was mature beyond her years and there was no nonsense about her at all.”

“There was this wisdom about Rudi that I’d never seen in anyone else I’d worked with,” adds Marianne. “Yet I never felt stupid or awkward with him because he never patronised me; he listened to me the way I listened to him.”

While Marianne and Rudi’s relationship started out as strictly professional, it wasn’t long before their respect for one another turned into a relaxed kind of friendship. “I found it easy to talk to him so we’d go for coffee and chat about work,” says Marianne. “I was very comfortable with her which surprised me, because I’m usually very private,” adds Rudi.

It was during one of these coffee breaks that the pair’s comradeship moved to a deeper level of friendship. “I told him I sensed a certain sadness in him,” explains Marianne. “I’ve always been fairly blunt and I just felt that this man needed someone to talk to about things other than work.” For Rudi, Marianne’s comment struck a chord none of his other colleagues or friends had ever found. “My mother had passed away six months before I met Marianne and it had brought back all the memories and pain from my childhood,” he says. “I’d watched my mother struggle to raise five children during the war and I’d spent my whole life trying to forget... Now this young woman was asking me about my sadness and for some reason I felt safe enough to talk to her about it.”

As Rudi shared his story with Marianne that day, a bond was formed that would cement the couple’s destiny from that moment on. “We started to talk less about work and more about our lives, and found that we had quite a lot in common,” says Marianne. “We’d both lost our fathers when we were children, we had similar values and ideas about the world, and we just seemed to be on the same wavelength.” A while later, Marianne revealed she too carried her own level of sadness, although hers related to her unhappy marriage. “I just hadn’t felt right in my marriage for a long time; I wasn’t able to be myself, and in some ways I felt trapped,” she says.

When Rudi learned of Marianne’s unhappiness however, he was careful not to influence his young confidant. “I could sense that Marianne and I were becoming close and, if I’m honest, I knew she had some feelings for me and I was beginning to have feelings for her, and I did not want to encourage that,” he says. “This was a young life with her whole future ahead of her and I didn’t want her making decisions based on me... If she decided to end her marriage it was none of my business.”

Because of these feelings, Rudi began to distance himself slightly from Marianne. For her though, it was too late. “I knew I had to leave my marriage and I have no doubt that I would have left either way, but I also knew I’d found someone special in Rudi and he was a bit of a catalyst.” Ultimately, Marianne left her husband and moved in with her brother.

Try though he did to keep his distance, Rudi felt increasingly drawn to Marianne and finally gave in to his emotions after a work function one evening. “We went for a walk along the foreshore and we talked about Marianne’s marriage break-up and our feelings for each other and then I kissed her,” recalls Rudi shyly. 

For Marianne, the kiss was a defining moment. “I’ve never felt more right about something in my life,” she says. For Rudi, however, the kiss brought even more doubts to the surface. “I kept thinking, ‘Am I being reckless here? This girl is the same age as my daughter and what would I do if I saw my daughter in a relationship with a man my age?’”

It was then that Rudi realised Marianne had no idea how old he actually was. “I hadn’t kept it a secret on purpose; it just hadn’t come up,” he says. But when he finally plucked up the courage to tell Marianne that night, he was met with the reaction he had feared. “I thought he was in his early forties because he looked fairly young,” recalls Marianne. “But I had to sit down when he said he was 54!” she grins. “She had a horrified expression on her face and I thought, ‘Well, that’s done it then’,” Rudi laughs. 

Fortunately however, Rudi’s revelation caused only a little bump on what Marianne was certain was the right path for her. “I think that’s when I started to truly believe that age was just a number because Rudi wasn’t like any other 54-year-old I’d ever met... He was young at heart, fit, handsome and healthy, so I forgot about his age and just saw him.”

Over the next few months, Rudi also came to accept that he was good for Marianne. “She was happy with me and I was at my happiest with her so there was no reason to fix something that wasn’t broken,” he says.

Words: Linda Peatling. Photography: Andrew Lehmann. Hair & make-up: Beauty by Corinne.

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