When Jo McIntyre, a Catholic, married her Protestant husband Roley in 1985, the couple faced everything from threats to an attack on their car.
Although the pair’s families were supportive of their relationship, Mr McIntyre (70), who grew up in Kesh, Co Fermanagh, was shunned by some of his friends and received death threats.
Every time she drove on her own, Mrs McIntyre (66), who was raised just a few miles away in the village of Ederney, was stopped and searched by UDR members.
Relationships between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland are now generally seen as unremarkable.
When the couple first got together in the early 1980s, however, the Troubles were still raging and relationships between the two communities in Co Fermanagh were hugely strained, particularly after the election of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in 1981.
“Fellas that I would have run about with and went to school with, certainly had a major problem,” Mr McIntyre said. “Some of them didn’t speak to me for eight or 10 years after I got married. Because I married a Catholic, in their words, ‘I had let the side down. I disgraced the cause’. It began to get more serious. I got death threats, bereavement cards sent to me.”
One night he was taken outside of the hotel where he worked and threatened by a group of men, who were linked to loyalist paramilitaries.
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When their first child was around a year old, their car was followed and rammed while the baby was in the back seat. “We were so afraid. But the more they tried to pull us apart, the more we stayed together,” he said.
Other couples were less fortunate.
“We both know several couples in our area, who were from different backgrounds and because of family pressure, they never were allowed to get together,” he added.
“And they died on their own, lonely. And maybe they only lived a mile from each other.”
Mrs McIntyre said attitudes towards mixed marriages have changed hugely over the last few decades.
Some of the people who were hostile to the couple now have children or grandchildren in mixed relationships.
“When their families realise how happy they were, they slowly melt and come back into their lives again,” she said.
Although the Good Friday Agreement “opened the door for more communication”, many families are still grieving for loved ones lost during the conflict, said Mr McIntyre.
“There’s a lot of people out there, and even in our own localities here, that have lost loved ones, and they have never got any end to it because the perpetrators have never been caught,” he said.
“That has caused it to linger because some people feel that they haven’t got justice for something that was done to their families. And I’m talking about both sides here.”
The Northern Ireland Mixed Marriage Association (NIMMA) has been offering support to couples like the McIntyres for almost 50 years.
Founded by a small group of people in mixed marriages in 1974 – the year the conflict claimed its 1,000th life – its purpose is to support each other and to give advice.
Paul McLaughlin from NIMMA said the early 1970s “were probably some of the worst years of violence and division, fear and suspicion in Northern Ireland”.
You only need one bigot in the extended family to throw a spanner in the works. She might be the nicest granny in the world but if she doesn’t like prods or she doesn’t like taigs, you have a problem
— Paul McLaughlin, Northern Ireland Mixed Marriage Association
“People who met socially with people from ‘the other side’ were really very much alone,” he said.
“You only need one bigot in the extended family to throw a spanner in the works. She might be the nicest granny in the world but if she doesn’t like prods or she doesn’t like taigs, you have a problem.”
Mr McLaughlin said the North’s history – where “denomination here tends to dictate identity” – made mixed marriages particularly difficult.
“The chasm that is there is much wider than any denomination,” he said.
“You’re actually breaking away from your tradition – to use a terrible word – your ‘tribe’.
“So, when people think of mixed marriage in Northern Ireland terms, they bring a lot of baggage with them.”
Couples from lower income backgrounds often face bigger challenges, he said, not least because 90 per cent of social housing is in predominantly Catholic or Protestant areas.
“If you can afford, for instance, to live in the leafy suburbs of Belfast or Holywood or Cultra, you won’t find the same problems,” he added.
Dr Cate McNamee, senior lecturer in social sciences at Queen’s University Belfast, said it is difficult to quantify how many couples are in mixed marriages.
“Part of the problem is that there’s not great data on this,” she told Belfast-based investigative website, the Detail.
“We know how many people get married, we know where they get married but we don’t know the religion.”
She said, however, that various studies have found that fewer than one in ten marriages in the North are mixed – a figure which has not changed substantially since the Good Friday Agreement.
In 1998, the Life and Times Survey, which aims to gather data about demographic changes in the North, found that 6 per cent of Catholics and 3 per cent of Protestants had a spouse or partner from the other faith.
In 2021, 9 per cent of Catholics and 8 per cent of Protestants were in mixed relationships.
A further 8 per cent of Catholics and Protestants said their partner has no particular faith.
“If there were increasingly more mixed marriages, you would expect to see somewhat of an increase over time,” Dr McNamee said. “But the fact that mixed marriage is still as small as it is, suggests that there are still barriers within society and between communities.”
Charity worker Danielle Roberts (37) and her husband Mark (42), an office manager, got married in 2010.
“We do joke that we’re a long term cross community project,” she said.
Mrs Roberts grew up in the predominantly Protestant area of Monkstown on the edge of north Belfast. She was raised in a Presbyterian household and was involved in the Girls’ Brigade, a Christian youth organisation, for 29 years.
Her husband grew up in Ballyrobert, a “nice, little, middle class” village in Co Antrim, a few miles from Belfast.
“Down the street was the Orange Hall. We were well known as Catholics in the area,” he said.
“It was generally alright. But yeah, I was wearing a St Malachy’s uniform. Everybody knew I was a Catholic.”
His mother and grandparents had a strong faith. “I was an altar boy until I was 16. My granny probably wanted me to be a priest,” he said.
The couple met through the alternative music scene where “no one knew or cared about your background”.
When the couple got engaged in 2009, their families were supportive. The couple did, however, struggle to find a place to settle.
“When we were looking at houses and looking at parts of east Belfast – which would probably be fine now – but in the late 2000s, it wouldn’t have been,” Mrs Roberts said.
“I guess we are lucky that neither of us have very distinguishing names. We could both be either so nobody would know.”
They also considered Monkstown but Mr Roberts had concerns.
“I might not have any faith (now), but I’m still a Catholic and that is just too close to a loyalist estate,” he said.
His wife said despite the couple’s initial challenges, mixed marriages feel unexceptional now.
“I don’t think we are a minority, in having a fine experience,” she said.
Luke Butterly is an investigative reporter with Belfast-based the Detail.
