Mary-Anne arrived 15 minutes late for work experience with Darian. He judged. He was wrong. Mary-Anne decided Darian was a jerk. She was wrong too. Twenty-four years later, they are married, still working together, and grateful neither of them trusted their first instinct.
Mary-Anne Guest, Head of Product, and Darian Foot, Regional Sales Manager, both work at Phil Hoffman Travel. It’s where first impressions wore off, friendship took hold, and something more grew. Between them now sits more than two decades of shared history, parallel careers, and a marriage that started in the same place it still clocks in.
When the meet-cute isn’t cute
Before Phil Hoffman Travel, Darian was at Harvey World Travel in Ingle Farm. He was busy. The manager was on long service leave. Darian was running the store with just a junior when he was told a work experience person would be turning up “basically tomorrow”.
“She rocked up late,” Darian says. “I remember thinking, this doesn’t feel promising.”
This wasn’t where Mary-Anne wanted to be. There as a favour to a friend and a misguided sense of obligation, she had low expectations of what the day would lead to.
“He didn’t give me much attention,” she recalls. “It was typical work experience. Sit in the back. Stamp brochures.”
She lasted a day.
Later, when Mary-Anne applied for a role at Phil Hoffman Travel, she recognised Darian’s resume sitting on Peter Williams’ desk.
Peter (who is now Phil Hoffman Travel’s Managing Director and CEO) asked if she knew him.
“I gave him a very nice review,” she says.
Redemption arc unlocked.
How to date someone at work without ruining everything
They both started at Phil Hoffman Travel’s Norwood store around the same time in 2001.
“It was a very close-knit office,” Mary-Anne says.
That meant after-work drinks, functions, social tennis and spending time together without calling it that.
“At the start, we were just friends,” Mary-Anne says. “I didn’t have him on my radar, because he was someone I worked with.”
Darian took a different view.
“I liked spending time with Mary-Anne,” he says. “There was just something about her. And at some point you’ve got to put the first foot forward, even if you’re not quite sure where it’s going to land.”
So he asked her out.
“That’s when it changed,” she says. “I already knew he was a really nice guy, but I had really friend-zoned him. But then we just had so much to talk about (and not just work).”
They kept their relationship quiet for four months, largely because they weren’t sure how workplace dating would be perceived.
Then Easter came around.
Their now shared boss, Peter, asked Darian what he was doing.
“I said I was going to the Gold Coast,” Darian says. “He asked who with. I said, I’m going away with Mary-Anne.”
“He ran downstairs and announced it to the whole office,” Darian says.
Mary-Anne laughs.
“Everyone already knew.”
There’s was the first Phil Hoffman Travel wedding.
“We beat Phil [Hoffman – the company’s founder] and Alison to the aisle,” Mary-Anne says.
The secret to staying married in travel
“When you’re married, working in the same office, driving to work together, driving home together… it’s a lot,” Mary-Anne says.
“The secret sauce,” Darian says, “is about 20 kilometres.”
That’s about the distance between Phil Hoffman Travel head office, where Mary-Anne is based, and the Norwood branch, where Darian is based.
“It works well,” Mary-Anne says. “And he’s not my boss.”
What only she sees
If Darian comes with a warning label, it’s probably about sport.
“People know he loves sport,” Mary-Anne says. “But I don’t think anyone really understands the extent of it.”
Any sport. Any time zone. No matter what else is happening.
She laughs.
“Sport will always win. Can’t you tell how much I love that.”
But beneath the endless fixtures and late-night score checks is something else Mary-Anne says people don’t always notice.
“How level-headed he is,” she says. “He deals with things so well and stays calm all the time.”
“It can be frustrating!”
In an industry built on disruption, Darian doesn’t panic easily. He takes things as they come, absorbs the noise, and keeps moving forward. That calm shows up at work, but it matters even more at home.
Which is where the care sneaks in.
“Every night he makes me a cup of tea,” Mary-Anne says. “When I’m tired after a long day, he’ll get off the couch and comes back with my tea.”
She pauses.
“But best of all, he makes sure my wine cupboard is stocked.”
What he’s learned by watching her
Asked what Mary-Anne has taught him about work or life, Darian doesn’t hesitate.
“The way she stands up for what she believes in,” he says. “She’s not afraid to back herself and offer an honest opinion.”
“I love how genuine Mary-Anne is,” he says. “She’s extremely well respected and loved by many, both personally and professionally.”
People trust her, he says, because they always know where they stand.
The travel test
Their next trip is to Scotland in June and July.
“Mary-Anne’s a big Outlander fan,” Darian says.
Highlands. Edinburgh. Isle of Skye. Then London. Then a cruise from Barcelona to Rome. Then Puglia. They’ve travelled a lot together. Have plans for so many more trips.
But the truest test of this relationship didn’t happen on holiday.
It happened in the years when travel wasn’t easy. Ash clouds. Terror attacks. Border closures. A pandemic that pulled the industry apart.
Mary-Anne and Darian went through it all together. Two people in the same industry, carrying the same uncertainty, coming home to the same kitchen table and choosing travel again and again.
Not because it was easy. But because that’s how love is. For better or worse.
It’s not endurance. It’s devotion.
And if love is easily choosing the same person and the same life, even as the world keeps shifting underneath you, that’s a pretty bloody awesome happily ever after.
