WHEN TRACEY AND PETER MCGROGAN EACH FOUND THEMSELVES SINGLE IN THEIR LATE 30S, THE SEARCH FOR LOVE HAD THEM REACHING FOR THE SAME NEWSPAPER.
“I tell everyone I bought him from the paper!” Tracey jokes.
The GemLife Gold Coast contract holders first met in 2004 and have been married for 17 years.
“Back in those days, the Quest community newspapers would run classified advertisements of people who were looking for a partner,” she said.
And in one particular edition, Tracey found Peter’s advertisement.
“I’d been looking for a while,” said Peter. “I wasn’t interested in playing round, I wanted a girlfriend – someone I could spend the rest of my life with.
In fact, I was dating someone else when I heard from Tracey.
“The lady I was with asked if I’d received other replies to the advertisement and I told her that I had and there were two I hadn’t yet replied to. She said, ‘then why are you limiting your options?’, which gives you an indication on how well that relationship was going!” he laughs.
One of those two women was Tracey.
“In those days, there were no smartphones or social media, there was only voicemail,” continued Peter. “I called Tracey and ended up speaking with her mother! I learned that we didn’t live too far away from one another, I said, ‘look, instead of just speaking on the phone, why don’t we meet?’.”
“And that’s what we did,” said Tracey. “We started talking at our first meeting and we haven’t stopped since!”
Tracey said she knew Peter was the one very quickly.
“He listens, actually listens,” she said. “He is one of the few people who really does. For example, I mention a favourite perfume in passing and then months pass, it’s my birthday and he surprises me with the perfume.”
For Peter it is the connection with someone genuine that caused him to fall in love with Tracey.
“There are never any surprises, I know what she’s thinking,” he said. “We just get on so well. For example, we were on a roadtrip between South Australia and Victoria for two and a half weeks and we never had the radio on in the car – we were chatting all the way. We never shut up!”
Peter seamlessly became part of the family – once he’d passed the scrutiny of Tracey’s son.
“I remember the first time I introduced him to Peter,” said Tracey. “My son, aged just 13, asked Peter what his intentions were.”
Today, the family is very tight knit with the couple being immensely proud of their young grandson.
Peter is a retired metal fabricator and Tracey is now a consultant, having decided to step back from a full-time HR role with a major company.
And they’re very much looking forward to moving into their GemLife Gold Coast home.
“We’re currently living in a townhouse at Woody Point,” said Peter. “We have a friend who lives in an over-50s lifestyle resort. During Covid, we were thinking about him and whether he’d be lonely. Then we discovered what a great community he lives in. That’s when we knew that was something we wanted for ourselves.”
As they started searching, they found GemLife Gold Coast had everything they wanted in terms of the quality of the homes and the facilities.
“Even though we’ve only just turned 60, community is so important to us, especially as we look at the years ahead,” said Tracey. “And we’ve made so many new friends with other contract holders. There are eight of us who get together for lunch and dinner regularly.”