The love story of Rosy & Donald Ohon

Young Donald Ohon met Gospel artist Rosy Ohon after he spotted her elder sister around their estate. "I decided to talk to her sister and I could see from her looks that she came from a good stock," he says with a laugh. "So since she said that she was dating someone, I asked her if she had a sister."

Rosy by then was determined not to date. She had been abused as a teenager and was not ready for emotional entanglements. She had closed her heart to any suitors, completely disinterested in dating and was taking a break from it for as long as she could. If she ever dated again, she had resolved, that man would have to be the person she was marrying.

"I gave my life to Christ again 1997, the same year that I met him," she says.

She says that meeting Donald was divine, because despite her determination not to date, when her sister told her about him, she found herself interested in him, having never laid eyes on him. Coincidentally, he had also been in several relationships and was not going to date unless he was sure that it would lead to marriage.

"When we met, we both knew immediately that we were meant to be life partners. We were all smiles, blushing and just fell in love," she says, and Donald agrees, saying the connection was instant. She was 17 and he was 22.

He cooked for her on their first date, as he would often do throughout their courtship. "But of course I did not eat much on the first date because you are supposed to be demure," she says, laughing.

"Later, I opened up to him and told him about everything that had happened to me and the lifestyle I led," she says.

He thought nothing of it and says that it in fact made him want to support her even more. "She was a perfect match for me and she was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with," he says. "Everyone has a history and you cannot judge people by their history, because there is no perfect person on earth. I also had a past, because I was not brought up in a Christian family, and had had to figure my way out."

"Meeting my husband helped with what I had gone through, because when you meet someone you love and who you can be with, that is protection. Since then, I have felt safe from everything that I went through," she says.

Their first baby, Hope, came in 1999. Rosy and her baby lived with her parents for one and a half years. Donald had been jobless for seven years, but he promised her that once he got a job, he would marry her. He kept his promise and married her in 2001, in a very small wedding that was planned by only the two of them. "We had fallen, but we were still born again so we wanted a small wedding ceremony so that we could live as man and wife," says Rosy.

They have had a beautiful marriage but it has not been a bed of roses, having to fight many battles in their 16 years of marriage. "I had anger issues which my husband had to put up with. I have had to tame myself and have self-control, and he has loved me despite it all. I am still as so in love with him," she says.

Donald says their happiness is because they invested in their marriage. "Our love just keeps on increasing. I also have weaknesses, but even if there are issues, God has given us wisdom. You have to create time for each other and revive those memories of when you were younger," he says.

The couple is blessed with four children: Hope, 18, Joy, 13, Imani, 9 and Zoey, 2.