Soni Irabor is the popular radio broadcaster who has carved a niche for himself in the broadcast industry. The veteran journalist in this interview with City People spoke on how he met his wife Betty and how he fell in love seeing her for the first time. You have been a journalist all your life, and you are also married to a journalist, Betty. How did this happen and how has it helped or not help your marriage'Oh! Betty and I have something very interesting in common. She's March 25th, I am March 23. So we have a lot of similarities in the way we behave and when I met her, she was a PRO Officer with a company called VOO. Her company used to promote albums. Popular name like Onyeka Onwenu for example were such beneficiaries of that promotion. Then of course there's one Janet I don't know what happened to him now. And this pretty lady was very much in charge. She was beautiful.Me, I had gone to do my programme at NTA called Sunday Show. Then, my friend Mannie Onumonu said, boy let's go to Voo, they are launching an album, I think it was Onyeka's album. And we got there. That is how I met Betty. When I saw Betty, I told Manny, I said this girl, I go marry her ooo (laughs) it was meant to be a joke but something in me told me I was telling the truth because a year later, we were married. We met July 1982, we got married July 1983.What was her initial reaction when you told her'(He laughs). Oh my God you mean you want to hear all these. She had one Romanian friend, a lady, who was also working in that company. I think the company was owned by one Mr. Vincent Osamor I waited for her to try to see that her audience was comfortable and everything and I just talked to her sha. We stepped out, the rest is history. By the way I had just bought a brand new car at that time. So that helped to woo her too I wasn't trying to say I was showing off my car. No. But it came in handy. That is how we met.Were you the one that convinced her to come join journalism'No. That is the real interesting part of it. Even though she was working at that place, her mind was already in Journalism. She was already planning to get out of where she was.And I used to be very involved in US Embassy activities. It was called USIS then. A lot of activities that took place then, I used to be very involved in them. We used to have phone conferences, discussions, debates and all that. And one of those days I was there and Doyin Abiola was also there and Betty came with me. So I just introduced the 2 of them and before I knew what was happening Doyin found out that she could write. Doyin said come to Concord. Doyin was the MD of Concord at the time and Dele Giwa was in charge of Sunday Concord, Ray Ekpu or Yakubu Mohammed, one of them was in charge of the daily paper. So that's how Betty found herself in the Features Department and she became an Assistant Editor.And how have you been able to sustain the marriage over the year'It's been quite an interesting experience. One thing is that, we don't hide anything from each other. Second thing is that when you have a friend and you don't allow malice to come between you. So that has sustained us. Though we disagree but I don't know the last time we fought. It's been a long time we fought. People say it's not true. How can you just have a normal relationship. But by the grace of God, we have a normal relationship, it's not something I will start saying I want to plead with you to believe me or satisfy your curiosity. We had it very well and it's 33 years on.
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