How I met my partner: Noel and Mary, married to each other and to their music

Mary Greene and Noel Shine met through music, and music has been a current through their relationship for the last four decades.

Mary said: “I noticed him before we were introduced: In the ’80s, I would come up to Cork from Waterford to go busking, so I could earn money to go to gigs.

“Noel was performing with John Spillane and I took note of his musicianship.

“Then, a year later, we were introduced by a mutual friend at the Cork Folk Festival, so it was music that brought us together.”

They spent an evening with friends and she thought, ‘this fella is kind of interesting’. Then, the next summer, when Mary’s family pub in Dunmore East wanted a musician to start off a session one night a week, a friend suggested she get onto Noel - “so I hired him!” she laughed.

He would come down one night a week, and “by the end of the summer of ’84 we were kind of an item, but I was going to France for a year as part of my studies. I ended up spending that whole time going back and forth, because I was completely besotted, and he was, too.”

When she came back, she was helping her dad in the pub and, as Noel was driving her back from Cork one day, he said: “‘Is there any point in you going back to live in Waterford?’ They were the days before mobile phones, so we pulled into a phone box and called my dad and I said, ‘I think I’m after moving to Cork’.” Mary recalled.

She has been in Cork ever since, explaining: “I love Waterford but I chose Cork to live in.

“It has a very friendly music scene with a lot of cross-genre pollination, and it’s a lovely place to bring up children.”

They married in 1990, with friends helping them to prepare the venue, make the food, and one friend even closing his pub for the day and transferring his license to their venue.

“It was just the most beautiful day — everyone who came along just plugged in and did a song, there were sessions in every room in the house — it was just wall-to-wall music.”

They had two daughters, Sadie and Ellie, in 1993 and 1996, and moved from Cork city to Muskerry when their house got too small. Both girls sang before they could talk. Mary and Noel have made music as a duo and as soloists, and also have a band called Greenshine with Ellie.

Mary said: “The common links between myself and Noel would be music and humour. Here at home, we sit next to one another at opposite ends of the couch and make observations about life, what’s on the telly, and we fall around the room with the laughing.

“Even after all this time, I have more of a laugh with Noel than anyone else in the world.”

As musicians, money was tight at times, and “sometimes the only thing you had was a free laugh”, she said.

“We’re together a long time now and the excitement level goes down, but the care you have, the kindness you show, the interest you have in one another, that increases.”

She added: “Life is never a bed of roses when you’re married, there can be times you could murder each other, but it’s about remembering why you got together in the first place.

“We have rows, mostly over trivial things, but the older you get, you learn how to cruise through them, and know that things come right in the end.”