A married couple separated by 31 years who live on a boat and journey around the world have said they feel age is just a number despite one being older than the other’s mother.
Marjorie and Mark Jensen, 33 and 64 respectively, live on a 40-foot sailing boat travelling the world together.
Mark, who is Australian and from Sydney, retired when he was 48 and purchased the boat following a career in the media where he was a writer, producer and director.
Marjorie, who is French, used to work for the French government before she took a sabbatical and joined her now-husband after the pair met in 2019.
The couple had some “problems” when presenting their relationship to Marjorie’s family, however, with Mark saying he is one year older than Marjorie’s mother, while her father showed him his personal knife collection when they first met.
Mark and Marjorie were also on the receiving end of some “shocked” faces when they kissed in public at the time they started dating, when Marjorie was 28 and Mark 59.
Now the pair, who spoke to PA Real Life from Fort Lauderdale in Florida after sailing from the Caribbean, have set their sights on journeying across the Atlantic next year in their boat, before spending time in France and London.
“I think we’re in total harmony, Mark and me, we’re in the same place, everything works together, we don’t notice the age gap because we like the same things in the same way,” Marjorie said.
The couple first met in 2019 in the north of France after they were introduced through a mutual friend.
Mark said that while spending some time in Cherbourg, where Marjorie was working at the time, he was part of a group where English-speaking French people would get together.
“I met everybody in Cherbourg who could speak English, except Marjorie because she never came along to those meetings,” Mark said.
“I got to meet (Marjorie’s) co-worker and we would often have a beer together and one day he said he has a friend coming along to join us.
“We were at this bar which had a mezzanine level, we were sitting on the top level and we could look down.
“A very pretty lady walked across the floor, turned around and looked up towards where we were and waved.
“I thought she must have been waving at someone behind us but she was waving at my friend.”
Mark said he sent his friend to the bar to fetch some drinks while the pair sat together alone.
