Lina and Mario Bettanin recently celebrated 70 years of marriage.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
Mario and Lina Bettanin have had a romance, not just a marriage, that has stood the test of time.
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The pair, who celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on Boxing Day, 2025, still walk hand-in-hand and their favourite thing to do together is spend time with each other.
Mario knew as soon as he laid eyes on Lina (née Caverzan), when they were both 17, that she was ‘the one’.
Lina wasn’t as immediately convinced.
“He was cheeky,” she said.
“My mother kept warning me, ‘he’s too cheeky for you’.”
Mario had arrived in Australia in 1951 after World War II.
He left Italy just after his 17th birthday, when finding employment was difficult due to returned soldiers being prioritised for job vacancies.
He lived with his aunt and uncle near Lina’s sister and her husband in St George’s Rd, which was farming land at the time.
He would buy milk from Lina’s sister, who told Mario that her parents and three of her sisters would soon arrive in Australia.
“She said none of her sisters were for me; one was engaged, one is a year older than me and the other one is too tall for me,” Mario said with a laugh.
“But I didn’t listen to her. The moment I saw Lina, I said, ‘that’s the girl I want’.”
The two attended English classes together, enjoying each other’s company, and eventually Mario won her over.
“The funny part, in Italian custom, the spouse goes up to the father and asks permission to marry the daughter, or get engaged, or take her out,” Mario said.
“I went up to Lina’s father and said, ‘I want to marry your daughter, can I have your permission?’ and he said, ‘You’d better go and ask her mother, she decides all those things.’
“So I had to get enough courage to go up to her mother, it was very scary.”
Nonetheless, Lina’s mum gave her blessing with the condition they had a chaperone when they went out.
“We used to say to the chaperone, stay in front of us, and we’d have a cuddle on a back road — just a cuddle and a kiss — we were never alone,” Mario said.
So, on a hot Boxing Day in 1955, which the pair remember as being around 40ºC, a 21-year-old Lina and 22-year-old Mario were wed at St Brendan’s Church in Shepparton.
“I wore a suit. Lina worse a long white dress, which she made herself,” Mario said.
“We really felt the heat in our long outfits.”
After a reception at home catered by Lina’s mother, the newlyweds left for a beach honeymoon in St Kilda, where they stayed across the road from the pier at The Esplanade Hotel.
While the temperature was searing at home, when they arrived at the Spencer St train station, it was pouring rain.
They were glad to have packed their coats because their honeymoon was “cold the whole time”.
Ten months later, the first of their seven children was born.
When Lina’s fourth pregnancy yielded a surprise set of twins during delivery, it meant their first five babies were born in as many years.
Now, at 91 and 92 years of age, the doting couple also have 15 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Mario and Lina Bettanin are just as happily married today as they were on their wedding day 70 years ago.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
They bought their first block and built their first home together in Wyndham St, not far from Victoria Park Lake.
Mario worked at Shepparton Plasterworks for a few years before being offered a job at Cleckheaton as a labourer.
Eventually he was promoted to a manager and spent 25 of his 42 years there in management.
“I got a good wage, we had a car, Lina was busy raising five kids and was very supportive of me, because I was involved everywhere, Rotary, the Chamber of Commerce, church, boy Scouts, you name it,” Mario said.
“Lina never complained. She was my backbone. She deserves a gold medal.”
Lina said the key to their long and healthy marriage was understanding and respecting that each of them were individuals.
“We agree to disagree,” she said.
“We both work towards our happiness, you have to work towards your happiness, you can’t just chuck it in.”
When the kids were small, Mario would rise for work, have a shower, make coffee for himself and for Lina, then take it into his wife to listen to the 7am news together before he headed off to work and she got up to parent their children.
“I still take coffee in bed every morning to Lina,” Mario said.
“During the day she gets half a dozen coffees and other things for me, but I still take coffee in every morning.”
The lovebirds attended a Boxing Day Mass at St Brendan’s where they received a special blessing and then celebrated their platinum anniversary at Italian function centre Amici, in Shepparton, with around 60 family and friends on December 27.
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