On Thursday 24 October we celebrated the 40th anniversary of Martine Joos as secretary of the International Press Association. In October 1979 she started working for API-IPA, and in the four decades since Martine has been continuously at the center of the association. She has been and still is the most invaluable source of information for thousands of foreign correspondents in Brussels, who have passed by her office in the IPC to become a member of API, to get help with accreditations or advice on settling in Belgium and how to cope with the many institutions and local bureaucracies.