Can teenage love last the distance?

PHIL REID/Dominion Post

GOING STRONG: Brent and Avril Ringrose with their youngest children Charlie, 2, and Harry, 8 months.

CRAIG SIMCOX/Dominion Post

HAPPY DAYS: Amanda Walsh and Troy Po with Matilda, 6 months.

Relevant offers

He's 37, but Brent Ringrose has never had his own bedroom. When he left school and the room he shared with his brother, he moved in with "Avs", the sporty blond Viard College classmate he'd been hanging out with since they were 11.

The Titahi Bay couple had their first baby a year out of school, married at 18 and now have five children. Rugby-mad Charlie, 2, and Harry, 8 months, were an afterthought - it was all over too quickly for Avril, who'd had three children by the time most women are considering their first.

The teen twosome are a blip on the ever-climbing marriage age graph. There's no known research into the success of high-school sweetheart relationships, but international research has found couples who marry in their teens are two to three times more likely to divorce than those marrying in their twenties or older.

Avril, 37, admits she'd be nervous about her eldest Vince, now 18, getting married. When she and Brent got engaged, their friends were subjected to parental pep talks about the pitfalls of marrying young. But there are also benefits, Avril says. For one, there are no ex-girlfriends to contend with. Or the stomach-curdling terror of meeting the parents. "His extended family are not just in-laws to me. His mother I've known since I was 11. There's that real connection."

Though the couple had been close mates since form 1 (year 7), they didn't "go round" till their last year at school. At each of their houses a friend was egging them to call the other and declare their attraction.

They'd always planned to get married but when Avril became pregnant with Vince, the plans were sped up. It was a fairytale proposal: Michael Hill Jewellers had a $10 special on women's wedding bands if you bought a man's ring.

"Should we buy a wedding ring? OK. That was my proposal. You can see why she goes out with me," Brent laughs.

"I have a whole lot of friends finding their life's love now, at 35," says Avril. "I think, what a shame they've missed out on 15 years with each other."

Standing in front of the fairytale wallpaper they've just hung in six-month-old Matilda's ridiculously tidy room, Troy Po and Amanda Walsh look every bit the fairytale couple. While others their age (21) are causing drunken havoc on Dunedin streets, they're quietly paying off the mortgage on their smart Titahi Bay villa and talking investment and home renovation.

The pair met in Onslow College's 9JD, when Troy was a bleach-blond tearaway and Amanda a sensible saver amassing a house deposit.

When they began dating in year 11, relationships were so short-lived they celebrated monthly anniversaries. But Troy soon moved in with Amanda's parents, so they've barely had a night apart.

Amanda's parents were high-school sweethearts and Troy's got together young, about 20, so neither feels uncomfortable about settling down so young. And, like Brent and Avril, they don't view partying and dating friends with any longing. "We think we're one step ahead of them," Amanda says.

OVER the hill in Lower Hutt, most of Chris Field, 38, and wife Kelly's friends have already done the big OE, but they figure they can travel when the youngsters - Ryan, 3, Zara, 5, and Jack, 7 - are old enough to remember more than just the parks and swings.

Kelly was 17 and in her last year at Heretaunga College when she met 21-year-old lycra-clad Chris at a duathlon in Levin. A gun runner, she was sponsored by his parents' running shop.

Their first date was "some American Indian movie" followed by McDonald's for dessert. The next night they went to Fishermans Table on the Petone esplanade, where training-obsessed Chris ordered himself two main meals. "I thought, `I really hope I don't have to pay'," Kelly recalls.

They were married about four years later and are still going strong after 12 years. Kelly admits she sometimes looks wistfully at friends returning from their OE with wild stories, but she questions the notion that marrying young is more risky.

"As long as you've got similar interests, I think you're going to be good as gold. We were both at the same stage and had the same ideas. We didn't have to wait, put your life on hold for 10 years. We could just get started straight away."