More than 50 years ago, at Ellerslie Racecourse, David Coon placed a bet on a horse called King Amber because he believed that it had in some way spoken to him. The horse came in, not only winning for David what was then “a good week’s wage” but altering the course of his life forever.
Only hours earlier, David – who hails from Wisconsin – had arrived on the Mariposa cruise liner from San Franscico, aboard which he ran the gift shop. Auckland was part of a six-week voyage that also included a selection of other Pacific Islands like Tonga and Hawai’i.
“It was a Saturday and I jumped into a taxi on Queen Street and the driver asked where I wanted to go,” recalls David over coffee and cake at his Avondale home with his wife, Margaret. “I asked for some suggestions, and he said that the only thing of any interest was the races, so off we went.”
As David had never attended the races before, the taxi driver kindly hung around for a while, getting the US tourist a race book and showing him the ropes. Following his hot streak, David decided to not push his luck any further and save his winnings by getting a bus back into town rather than a cab.
“And the only other person that was on that bus was Margaret,” David tells me as he looks lovingly over to his wife.
I follow David’s gaze to see Margaret return it with a raised eyebrow and look of playful suspicion.
“Now, that’s not quite true!” she ribs him. “There were a few other people, I was not the only one!”
“I thought you were!”
Either way, David chose to sit next to her, and Margaret jokes that she remembers thinking: “What a blinking cheek!”
“I asked what she’d bet on, but she didn’t answer me,” chuckles David. “She didn’t talk to me until we got to Newmarket. I asked if she wanted to meet later, and she said only if I got off the bus at the next stop to meet her mother first.”
“I was only 23, and I knew what my mother would say if I came home and said, ‘Well, I’ve met this strange man on the bus, and he wants to take me out to dinner.’ So, he did.”
After dinner David returned to his ship, and the pair met briefly the following day.
“She was a florist,” David continues. “I went to the shop and said goodbye to her, we only had about 15 minutes, then I returned to the ship and sailed off. Six weeks later, I came back on another circuit, and we spent the day together.”
Almost literally ‘like ships in the night’, David left again the next day and disaster struck in Hawai’i.
“I lost my way in Honolulu, and I couldn’t find where to return my hire car. By the time I got to the ship, all the doors were closed, and I couldn’t get on.”
With no one to run the gift shop, David was instantly dismissed.
“David got there as the ship was leaving,” says Margaret. “He was so close he could have touched it.”
It would be another 18 months before the pair felt the warmth of each other’s touch again and communicated only via letters in the meantime.
“I got turned down by immigration – they just wanted people with money back then, which I didn’t have,” says David.
“Eventually my cousin rang immigration in Wellington and said that my mum and I would fly down in person to meet them and explain the situation,” recalls Margaret. “And with that, they had a change of heart and let him in!”
The year was 1971, and David proposed on his first night back. But there were still further battles ahead.
“Dave had been married before, and I’m an Anglican and the Anglican church in those days wouldn’t marry us,” says Margaret. “We ended up getting married in Greyfriars in Mount Eden, a Presbyterian church.”
Their families, too, thought that the marriage would not last – perhaps understandably as the couple had only spent a total of around three weeks in each other’s presence upon their engagement.
“But I knew the moment I left San Francisco that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her,” says David.
“Better than Married at First Sight,” says Margaret, “and we had more clothes on!”
David later worked at the iconic K’ Road department store George Court & Sons under Stephen Tindall (before he founded the Warehouse and became a Sir) and opened a Mount Eden florist with his wife, called Margo’s (it’s still there, now named Roses).
“It was an empty dry-cleaning shop,” recalls Margaret. “We had no money behind us, so it was a big gamble, and so it’s nice to see it’s still going.”
David also developed a love of horseracing – a passion passed on from Margaret’s family – and they remain active members of the racing community, attending events and owning shares in nine steeds.
“Kindness and patience are essential,” says David.
“Ten years ago, as a surprise, David bought me a square-foot plot of land in Scotland which automatically made me a Lady,” reveals Margaret. “For my next birthday, he arranged for some racing people to meet us at Ellerslie where I was to present a woolen blanket to a horse, and on it it said: ‘Presented by Lady Margaret Coon.’ Then he told me to open the race book and there was a race sponsored by Lady Margaret. It was such a wonderful day.”
Surprise grand romantic gestures aside, I ask the couple – who have a daughter and three grandchildren – the secret to their long and happy marriage.
“You have to work as a team,” says Margaret. “Also, we’ve rarely argued, ever.”
“Kindness and patience are essential,” says David.
Given their story, I ask, do they believe in fate?
“You have to,” says Margaret. “Although he’d come from America, we had the same values and principles. We had similar upbringings and strong role models by way of both sets of our parents who also had strong, long marriages.”
And most importantly of course, even with the might of the Pacific Ocean between them – and all that came with it – they never gave up on themselves, or each other.
