Lorraine Kelly's marriage to rarely-seen husband - 'tiny' wedding to haunting tragedy
Lorraine Kelly and Steve Smith have survived everything from long distance to devastating heartache during a beautiful romance that has spanned three decades
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Steve Smith was Lorraine Kelly's cameraman on TV-am, and from the first moment she saw him, the reporter knew he was 'The One'.
"He walked into the TV-am office 28 years ago where I was working as a reporter and he was part of the crew, and I thought, 'That'll do, I'm having that,'" Lorraine - who turns 61 today - told Woman and Home, admitting she seduced him on a work trip.
"We were friends for a good year, then it all happened rather quickly when we had to do a shoot on location at Glencoe. We were staying in a tiny hotel in the middle of nowhere and I got him incredibly drunk on tequila before making my move. The way I remember it is that I leapt on him like a ninja and he had absolutely no defence!"
They tied the knot in 1992 in what Lorraine has described as a 'real hand-knitted affair', revealing she made the invites and used a local taxi company for the wedding cars.
The bride walked down the aisle at Mains Castle in Dundee to the historic song, Bonnie Dundee, in front of 60 family and friends before her friend Alan sang Bette Midler's Wind Beneath my Wings for their first dance.
“It was such a small wedding, it was wee. It was very traditional," she once told YOU magazine.
Lorraine wore a stunning Princess Diana-like dress with big sleeves that she found on the sale rail but admitted it ended up being the one thing she regretted about her big day.
"The boys all looked fabulous in their kilts, then there was me in this ghastly number with big puffy sleeves," she told Woman and Home.
"I remember going to a wedding fair with my best friend and I'm not kidding you, I tried on one in the sale and thought, 'It fits, it's cheap and it's nice' - and I bought it there and then. Big mistake."
To begin with, Lorraine commuted from Steve's home in Dundee to London each week, but after landing a presenting gig on GMTV, they relocated to rural Berkshire.
In 1993 they bought an 18th Century cottage in Cookham Dean, Berkshire, for £270,000, and their daughter Rosie arrived one year later.
But in 2001, the family suffered agonising heartbreak while trying to add to their brood.
A pregnant Lorraine was on holiday in Oban, on the west coast of Scotland, when she was woken by sharp pains and bleeding.
“I got a stabbing pain in my right side and the following morning I woke at 4am feeling horrendous," she previously told YOU magazine. "I was bleeding and it was obvious that something wasn't right.”
Steve rushed her to hospital in Dundee where despite her fears, a scan revealed the baby still had a heartbreat.
“I cried with relief but the good news was not to last," she continued.
However, later that night the bleeding started again and Lorraine was rushed back to hospital by ambulance and dealt the devastating news that she had miscarried at eight weeks.
“At the hospital my fears were confirmed. I had miscarried at just over two months. I was devastated and questioned everything, wondering if I could have done something differently," she added.
But as the journalist worked through her own grief, she also worried about the impact the tragedy had had on her husband.
“That was a really difficult time and I think yes of course we should absolutely sympathise with the women who go through this but nobody asked after Steve,” she told Giovanna Fletcher's Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast.
“Nobody ever said ‘how are you?’ The only people who did, funnily enough, were friends that experienced it themselves and sadly as we know, far too many people experience it.
"I think we’ve got to be a bit more considerate about everyone and not just partners but extended family."
And earlier this year, she revealed the trauma is something that continues to haunt them to this day, tweeting: "It’s an experience my husband & I had just once, but it never leaves you."
When Rosie was about to start high school the family relocated to Scotland, first living in Perthshire and later Dundee.
Thanks to regular flights from Dundee to London, Lorraine could be in the English capital within two hours, but the time apart from Steve was still tough to take.
With her own chat show, Lorraine, on ITV, and Rosie now living in Singapore, the couple moved back to Buckinghamshire in 2017 and have been enjoying every second of their newfound time together.
"Steve and I are entering a new phase of our relationship right now," she said.
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