The touching friendship behind R U OK? Day

It’s a little after eight in the morning, and Allison Langdon is shedding rivers of tears. The A Current Affair host is settled on a couch, in a ray of warm winter sunshine, listing all the things she treasures about her longtime and much-loved friend Maryanne Larkin.

“You just meet some people who honestly light up a room,” Ally begins. “They have so much warmth and generosity. She’s so fun, and anyone who meets Maz just wants to be in that circle of hers. If something’s going on in your life, she’s the first person to reach out and check in and see how you are, to remember dates, to check in about the kids. She’s genuinely so warm and wonderful. I’m so appreciative that, thanks to Gavin and Mike, I get Maz in my life.”

About the founder of R U OK?

Mike, of course, is Ally’s husband, the journalist Michael Willesee. Gavin Larkin, Maryanne’s husband, died in 2011 from lymphoma, a little over two years after he founded the iconic mental health campaign, R U OK?. Michael and Gavin were mates, but Maryanne and Ally might even be closer. They’ve been drawn together by loss and common goals, and times that have tested them to the core.

Ally Langdon and Maryanne Larkin

“What I love about you, Ally, is your warmth, your authenticity,” Maryanne chimes in. “You are all over my kids when you see them, which I love. You just get them. You feel so much for me and for others, which is one of the things that makes you so good at your job. I remember, after Gav died, you were the first one to say, ‘let’s have a coffee’, and you were crying more than I was. She always cries more than me.”

“I know,” Ally smiles, wiping away tears. “It doesn’t matter how many years have passed. I do this every time … I don’t think that part ever gets easier. When I think about what you guys went through at that time – it stays with you. It changes who you are. It does change everything forever. How you got out of bed each day and raised your beautiful kids, still managed to take the time to think about everyone else …”

A modern-day love story

Gavin and Maryanne were the first in their friendship group to marry.

“We were babies,” she tells The Weekly. “We were 20 and we met at a party – a 21st actually – but we were both tied up with other people. Then, two years later, I ran into him at a nightclub. By then, we were both free and we connected. It was like it was meant to be.”

Maryanne worked in fashion. Gavin was in hospitality but then segued into advertising. They went on to have three beautiful children – Gus, Josie and Van – and settle in a warm, light-filled family home not far from the sea in Sydney’s east. It sounds idyllic, but that hasn’t always been the case.

R U OK? founder, Gavin Larkin, with his children.

The beginning of R U OK? Day

“In the first year of our marriage,” Maryanne explains, “Gavin’s father died by suicide. It was really tough. I thought our marriage wouldn’t survive it. Gavin wasn’t the man I’d married. He was broken … We were kids, really – 26. We were young and, you know, it’s your father … Gavin didn’t start R U OK? then. It started down the track. But that’s when the seed was sown.”

Ally was at the dinner table with the family, a little more than a decade later, when Gavin told them he wanted to launch a campaign that would honour the memory of his dad, while staying true “to the kind of guy he was”. R U OK? was born. “Gav’s burning desire was that nobody else should have to go through what he and his brothers went through when his father died,” says Maryanne.

“By then, we’d had children, and these things revisit you when you have kids. Gavin now had this perception of, ‘Wow, my dad had us kids, yet he could still take his life. He must have been in so much pain.’

“So it was that. And also Gavin not wanting anyone else to have that ripple effect on the family – on marriages like ours. There’s a huge ripple effect with suicide within a community and a family. He didn’t want that to happen to anyone else.”

Growing support for R U OK?

It was a simple idea: To encourage everyone to check in on family and friends; open up a conversation about emotional and mental wellbeing. Gavin wanted his initiative to revolve around a single day.

“Today’s the day,” he said, “when I need to think about someone other than myself who might be struggling, and reach out and say, are you okay?”

“He always had an idea, but not an idea as big as this. This was really important to him,” Maryanne remembers. “It was a trailblazing thing to do because no one spoke about it back then. Suicide was a shameful topic. Yet people were going through it – families were going through it.”

Ally was immediately on board and has been an ambassador ever since. “You’d never doubt him,” she says, smiling now. “But it also felt like, oh, this is monumental, and is it possible? As a journalist, suicide was something we didn’t go near. I remember it was that and domestic violence. You didn’t touch either. But as Gav said, if we don’t talk about it, we can’t fix it, and what we’re currently doing isn’t working.”

Ally Langdon and husband Mike.

Launching R U OK? Day

Ally took the idea to the Nine Network’s Today show, where she was working. “I was trying to get them to do the weather down at Bondi Beach to launch the first R U OK? Day. But they were like, ‘No, it’s suicide, it’s too dark’. I could understand where they were coming from.

“I remember, the hardest conversation was calling Gav and saying, ‘Look, it’s not going to fly’. But he just refused to accept that as an answer.

“So I went back and explained that we were talking about having each other’s backs and checking in. That was an important part of it for Gav – as tough as the subject matter is, the narrative and the conversation around it had to be positive and uplifting.

“And guess where the Today show’s weather was shot? At Bondi, for the R U OK? Day launch.”

A devastating turn of events

R U OK? became a catchphrase almost instantly, and it changed the national conversation around suicide prevention and mental health. Research showed that those who were exposed to the campaign were up to six times more likely to reach out to someone who they felt might not be okay. And those on the receiving end of an R U OK? conversation felt better about their situation, having talked it through with someone who showed real interest and concern.

Those results were testament to Gavin’s determination and vision. “When you look at the amount of work that it takes to get an idea up,” Ally says, “I mean, lots of people have ideas at different times, but it takes something special to get something this big off the ground and create momentum and make noise.”

However, Gavin had been struggling through the campaign with unexplained aches and pains, and not long after the elation of that first R U OK? Day, his doctor ordered a scan. Gavin learned he had stage four lymphoma. Then, three weeks later, the Larkins’ eldest boy, Gus, who was 11, was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour.

Ally Langdon and Maryanne Larkin

Finding hope amid heartbreak

“Devastating doesn’t even do it justice,” Gavin told the ABC. But father and son weathered years of treatment together, with magnificent courage. “Life is random, and that’s what makes it wonderful,” Gavin added, “and you’ve got to cop the good with the bad.”

In September 2011, Gavin saw his last R U OK? Day come and go, taking phone interviews from his bed. “I always wanted to see R U OK? Day live on, because it’s more important than me,” he said. He died at home, a week later, surrounded by his family.

Towards the end of 2012, Gus’s health also took a turn for the worse. “And that was tough,” Maryanne told Australian Story, “because I didn’t have Gavin to help me.”

She remembers thinking that “Gav and Gus weren’t just ours” and opening the house up to Gus’s friends. “Gus would have the teachers bring a bunch of schoolmates around, and I’d make Gus’s favourite slices and he’d be so proud because all the boys loved them. You know, opening up and not closing off was a really important thing. And we had that community around us.”

Gus died in October 2013. He was 15 years old.

Living with loss

“Both of them died here at home,” Maryanne says, her voice shaking a little still, 12 years later. “Having to say goodbye to the people you love most – nothing gets harder than that.”

“It was just so heartbreaking to watch this beautiful human and close friend go through something as devastating as this,” says Ally. “And knowing that there’s not a single thing you can do to ease that pain. You just need to be present – be around when you’re needed – but there is a sense of helplessness to it.”

“There were so many tough times,” Maryanne admits. “Oh my goodness, it changes you. In the beginning, it’s almost like you walk around with a handicap that no one can see. You’re not living in the same world anymore. So it’s learning how to live in the world again, really. It’s also seeking help. I had a wonderful counsellor. I still check in with her now if I feel wobbly, and that’s a long time down the track.”

Two white women, Ally Langdon and Maryanne Larkin, smile while sitting on a couch.

“You showed a strength that none of us could comprehend,” Ally says. She doesn’t remember seeing Maryanne shed a tear for a long time.

“I think I cried the most in the car,” Maryanne says, “when I was alone.” And she and Josie and Van would cry together.

Gavin and the legacy of R U OK?

“Josie thanked me for teaching them how to grieve, if there is such a thing. All three of us slept in Gus’s room for over a year – Josie and I in his bed, and Van on a mattress on the floor. It was wanting to be close to him and for us to be close. Not for Van to go off to his room, Josie to go off to her room. We were in it together. We were like this unit. And you know, we still talk about them every day.”

Maryanne also realised that Gavin had left his family with exactly the help they needed to carry on without him.

“This is the biggest thing, and Ally knows this too,” says Maryanne. “It’s about the people around me who plugged in all through Gavin’s sickness and all through Gus’s. I mean, they really plugged in around us all the time. Food deliveries. ‘Can I take the kids to swimming lessons?’ All sorts of things. You couldn’t go through that without the love and the friendship.

“It was like Gav left us a gift. He left everybody a gift with R U OK?. But he left his own wife and Josie and Van a gift, which is that we’re always going to be checked on. All of our family, all our friends, are going to make sure that we are okay. It was like this special add-on gift.”

R U OK? continues on

Today, Josie is 24 and studying Communications at university.

“A chip off the old block,” says Maryanne. “And she’s off on a silent Vipassana retreat.”

“Josie is going to be silent?” Ally quips. “That girl can do anything she turns her mind to.”

She has been deeply involved with R U OK? since childhood. “And she’s constantly pushing herself or learning about herself,” Maryanne adds. “She is very much like Gav in that way. And she has a big voice and very clear thoughts, particularly about justice.”

Ally Langdon and Maryanne Larkin

Van, too, has been involved with R U OK?, he’s an avid golfer, and since finishing high school, he’s taken a gap year road trip to northern Australia.

“All of Gav’s best mates, and it’s such a solid group of friends, are in Van’s life,” says Ally. “They all check in. When he did his big trip up north, they pitched in for the petrol money.”

“And they talk about Gav to him,” Maryanne adds. “It’s not hidden away. They tell him how hopeless Gav was at this or that. At golf, for instance, he was tragic. They’re not oversensitive – they’re real and I love that.

“All my family and Gav’s family check in, too. The cousins as well – they’re very conscious of Van not having his dad.”

R U OK? in 2025

This year, R U OK? Day will fall on September 11. There was one year when Maryanne was feeling overwhelmed and took a break from the event. But she will be back again this year, supporting in whatever way she can. And so will Ally.

She ponders what being so close to Maryanne and the Larkin family through 20 years of love and struggle and sorrow has taught her.

“It teaches you that you never know what’s around the corner,” she says. “It teaches you to make the most of every moment, to appreciate the people in your life and to be mindful of the path you track. It also reminds you to do lots of checking in, and of the importance of kindness and just being a good human and a good friend.”

“See how lucky I am,” Maryanne says with a heartfelt smile. “How many people would have all this in their lives? I have friends and family who were never scared to come close, who we never shut out, who know my kids so very well. I truly feel lucky.”