Gisborne’s Rhythm and Vines music festival brought them together one summer day in 2014 and a smoothie sealed the deal.
“She was a bit of a day one,” said Olympic kayaker Max Brown of his fiancée Izzy Marsh.
Max Brown with his fiancée Izzy Marsh.
“I was working at R&V in a smoothie truck and she came up and I put my number on her cup…and we hit it off.”
They got engaged on New Year’s Eve 2023 and are now planning their wedding.
Marsh was at Lake Karāpiro last Wednesday morning to celebrate Brown’s official naming in the New Zealand men’s canoe sprint team for the Paris Olympic Games.
Originally from Auckland, she moved to Cambridge in 2021 after buying a house with Brown, who works as a music tutor at Cambridge Middle School.
They have spent the past three years renovating their Leamington home.
“You can do anything if you’re naïve enough to start and stubborn enough to finish,” Brown said.
Marsh works remotely for an Auckland design agency and enjoys yoga, Pilates, and taking advantage of local walking and biking trails in her spare time.
“We don’t know where’s next after Cambridge, but it’s served us really well – it’s a beautiful little town, you’re among lots of motivated, great people, so there’s a real pulse on the place here and yeah, we love it,” she said.
“I think Cambridge has been such a nurturing place for us to grow and be pushed as well, outside of our comfort zone… with all the other great people that are in the community it’s so inspiring – you walk down the street and you can see legends from all different walks of life and different sports.”
The New Zealand men’s canoe sprint team celebrates their selection for the Paris Olympic Games, officially announced at Lake Karapiro in Cambridge
Brown and Kurtis Imrie were named for their second Olympics last Wednesday, alongside Games debutants Hamish Legarth and Grant Clancy.
The four boatmates will make up the first male K4 crew to represent Aotearoa at the Olympics since Richard Boyle, Finn O’Connor, Stephen Richards and Mark Scheib competed in Barcelona in 1992.
Imrie will also pair with Legarth in the men’s K2 500m race, while Brown will team up with Clancy in the C2 500m.
Imrie said competing at Tokyo 2020 was “a dream come true” that gave him and Brown the drive to have a crack at this year’s Paris Games and qualify the K4.
“I’m 28 and he’s 29, so well before we were born was the last time a boat was raced in the K4, so it’s been awesome that we’ve managed to achieve that,” he said.
