BBC weather presenter and former Strictly Come Dancing contestant Carol Kirkwood has confirmed she has got engaged live on BBC Nreakfast. Carol confirmed she and her partner got engaged while they were on holiday.
Carol was 'outed' by Breakfast host Sally Nugent while she was speaking to the presenter who is at the Chelsea Flower Shower. Sally commented: "I'm a bit concerned about how you're standing up with a giant rock on that left hand."
"Thank you Sal! It is rather nice. I got engaged!" Carol confirmed. Sally continued: "It's the happiest news! We are so, so delighted. Congratulations.
"Can we confirm to the nation what has happened?"
"Oh thank you! I think you just have Sally," Carol replied.
"We got engaged when we were on holiday. So it's lovely news and we're both thrilled. Thank you!"
"We're all so chuffed for you carol, on behalf of everyone here and everyone at home too," co-host Jon Kay added.
Carol has not publicly named her partner. She wrote a novel, Under a Greek Moon, over lockdown, discussing the plot with her long-term partner, who she won’t name, but who has been described by one magazine as her ‘secret boyfriend’.
“He’s only a secret boyfriend because I never talk about him,” she says. “I always feel that through my job, I put myself in the public eye and am very happy, but my partner and my family and my friends haven’t, so I’m hugely respectful of their privacy.
“I just don’t talk about them, other than to say that my partner is drop-dead gorgeous, he’s funny, he makes me very happy.”
And he’s romantic, she agrees.
“He gets up at quarter to three in the morning to make me a cup of tea before going to work – if that’s not romantic, I don’t know what is.”
She added: “Grand romantic gestures like whisking you off to Paris for a champagne-filled weekend are all very nice – and I wouldn’t knock that, but I would rather somebody was consistently romantic with their gestures and the way they are with me.
“I love chocolates and he’ll come home with my favourites. Or he’ll say to me, ‘You look nice today’, he’s just lovely.
“Sometimes he leaves me love notes. If I go to work before him, I come home and I’ll get a nice little love note saying, ‘Hope you had a nice day, look forward to seeing you later’.
“I’m not as romantic as he is – I just take care of him and want the best for him. I’m not one for grand gestures either. We live a fairly simple life. If I’m out and I see something I think he’ll like – it might be a funny book – I’ll buy it for him. We take each other by surprise with our gestures.”
She met her current partner at a party. “We liked each other at first sight. I think he’s very handsome. He gave me his phone number and didn’t presume to ask me for mine.
“We didn’t meet for ages afterwards, although we spoke on the phone quite a bit. So we got to know each other over the phone at first. He was really nervous when I met him for coffee and we just hit it off.”
Carol was married to businessman Jimmy Kirkwood for 25 years; they divorced in 2008.
