Rio Ferdinand confesses he considered dumping wife Kate over his grieving kids' reaction to his union following their mother's tragic death
Appearing on the former TOWIE star's podcast Blended, the former footballer, 46, shed light on how he dealt with introducing a new romance after losing his beloved wife Rebecca, and being left a single father to Lorenz, 18, Tate, 16, and Tia, 13.
Rebecca died aged just 34 after a short battle with breast cancer. She appeared to be in the clear only for a scan to reveal the disease had spread to her bones five weeks before her death, prior to which she planned her own funeral.
Amid his grief, Rio met Kate, who he began dating in 2017, however he revealed her introduction to his family was slow moving. The couple wed in Turkey in September 2019 and share two children; Cree, four, and Shae, who turns two later this month.
Discussing introducing his relationship to his children, Rio told his wife: 'It's hard, you don't really get over it if you do it wrong, if it's done abruptly without conversations and done the wrong way.
'But if people are saying no, the kids are saying no I don't know, man. I'm just lucky, fortunately we didn't get to that point...
'But if my kids have said no, we're probably not here right now. Because we don't get the chance to get to where we are, where we're like madly in love...
'Because as soon as the kids say no - we were in love at that time, but it was still early enough to think where you go, but on both sides, you go, 'The kids ain't accepting me, I can't get into this. It's too much stress.'
'And I'm going, 'The kids ain't happy. They're going to have to be number one.' And I think there's a lot of relationships that would end up because of that...
'I don't know how you push on after you've just found someone, you fell in love with them, you two together, and the kids aren't involved in that...
'And then when they get involved and not happy, I don't know how you still move forward together like that unless you separate it.'
On navigating the introduction stages, he said: ''I do think it's important in the way that you introduce this new person into the house. We very much were on the basis, we talked a lot before we even broached the idea with the kids...
'We brought Kate in as a friend first, they started seeing her around at different things that we go into friends' houses, et cetera. Kate will be there. And Ronnie, the dog, which is a great softener as well...
'But those moments of familiarity and, 'Oh, it's only Kate,' soften that next move where you go, 'Right, guys,' and you bring that. I just think we were really much about bringing them into the conversation, make them feel, have some ownership over the whole situation...
''Listen, guys, you remember Kate?' Let's see where we go then, Dad.' I think if you do it wrong, I've been in a situation, my own family recently, where it's done wrong. And I've been part of the ramifications of that and the repercussions'.
Rio married Rebecca in 2009, after meeting at the age of 21. He popped the question during a trip to Las Vegas in 2007, a year after Lorenz's birth, before marrying in an idyllic ceremony in Peter Island.
Following her tragic death, he released a statement reading: 'My soul mate slipped away last night. Rebecca, my wonderful wife, passed away peacefully after a short battle with cancer at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.
'She was a fantastic loving mother to our three beautiful children. She will be missed as a wife, sister, aunt, daughter and granddaughter. She will live on in our memory, as a guide and inspiration.
'Myself, my parents Janice and Julian, along with Rebecca's parents Lesley and Stephen, would like to thank our families, friends and my club colleagues who have rallied around in these desperate days, weeks and months.'
On Blended, Rio went on to discuss grief and guilt, saying: 'I think it's very natural to feel guilty. I don't think I ever went, really went out anywhere...
'I swear, even just going to work, there's massive guilt. Just going to work, you're thinking, I can't leave these three babies. I can't leave them...
'The fact they're going to school is definitely a 100% bonus, because you can do stuff in between there and really not feel that guilty. But then it was more like when they come home, and I really tried to make a conscious effort of being there, but then sometimes work did actually make me have to be out of the house...
'And it's like, it's a really big tug of war with yourself. But I think you have to be kind of, you have to take care of yourself. You have to... the kids are more, everyone's always said this, the kids are more resilient than you actually think...
'If you just put them in cotton wool and just really make them always feel secure and always just trying to make the perfect scenario for them, that's not good for them in the long run...
'So you being out of the house and not being there at moments, and they are questioning it, but they know you're coming back, it actually is good for them, I think, in time...
'But in the moment, I think it's hard to believe that and to really go like, okay, that's the situation, because your instincts are to feel guilty, do you know what I mean?...
'But going out on dates, I think are even good for you when you're in this position, in this transition, because whether it's the right person or not, it's a bit of you time, and your head space is not about being a dad and being protective and trying to cotton wool those next steps for the kids and make everything perfect.
'You're just actually, you're kind of coming away from that and actually the relief, I swear to you that the...
'I don't know, I used to feel so much like going out with my mates, or if you did go on a date, it's like... because your head's really heavy, man. It's really heavy.
'You're worrying a lot. It's just pure worry all the time, constantly worrying, worrying, worrying, seeing your kids look out of a window and thinking, what the hell are they thinking? And it just breaks you.'
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BBC News
33 minutes ago
- BBC News
Oasis 'sounding huge' as comeback tour launches
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Brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher will be joined on stage by Gem Archer, Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs and Andy Bell, all former members of Oasis, alongside drummer Joey Waronker, who has previously recorded with Beck and REM; and toured with band will also be augmented by a brass section, and backing singer Jess Greenfield, who is part of Noel's side project the High Flying rumours about the setlist have been swirling all week, as Oasis songs echoed around the Principality purported running order that was leaked to Reddit suggested the band would open with Hello and finish with Champagne Supernova, with other highlights including Acquiesece, Roll With It, Live Forever and is also expected to take lead vocals twice during the show, on short sets including songs such as Half The World Away and The Masterplan. Britain's biggest band Oasis were the biggest band in Britain from 1994 to 1997, selling tens of millions of copies of their first three albums Definitely Maybe, (What's The Story) Morning Glory and Be Here sneering vocals and Noel's distorted guitars brought a rock and roll swagger back to the charts, revitalising British guitar music after an influx of self-serious Seattle and raised in Manchester, they formed the band to escape the dead-end mundanity of their working class backgrounds."In Manchester you either became a musician, a footballer, a drugs dealer or work in a factory. And there aren't a lot of factories left, you know?" Noel Gallagher once said."We didn't start in university or anything like this. We're not a collection of friends that kind of come together and discuss things musically."We started the group... because we were all on the dole and we were unemployed and we rehearsed and we thought we were pretty good." Oasis was originally Liam's band, performing under the name The Rain. But after watching them live, Noel offered to join – on the condition that he became chief songwriter and de facto fait accompli brought them worldwide fame, culminating in two open-air gigs at Knebworth House in summer five per cent of the UK population applied for tickets, with a then-record 125,000 people watching the band top a line-up that also included The Prodigy, Manic Street Preachers, Ocean Colour Scene, The Chemical Brothers, The Charlatans and a Beatles festering tension between the Gallagher brothers often spilled over into verbal and physical at a gig in Barcelona in 2000, for example, Noel attacked Liam after he questioned the legitimacy of his eldest daughter. The guitarist walked out for the rest of the European tour, leaving the band to continue with a they repaired the relationship, the insults and in-fighting continued until 28 August, 2009, when Oasis split up minutes before they took the stage at the Rock en Seine festival in Paris."People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer," Noel wrote in a statement at the would later recount a backstage argument in which his younger brother grabbed his guitar and started "wielding it like an axe", adding, "he nearly took my face off with it". Since then, they've pursued successful solo careers, while constantly fielding questions about an Oasis called the idea "inevitable" in 2020, and said the band should reform to support NHS workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, he said his brother had spurned the idea, despite a lucrative offer from promoters."There was a lot of money knocking about," he told ITV's Jonathan Ross Show. "It was £100 million to do a tour."But [Noel] isn't into it. He's after a knighthood, isn't he?"The reconciliation took another five years and, with neither of the Gallaghers consenting to an interview, it's hard to know what informed their decision to get back newspapers suggested that Noel's divorce from Sara McDonald in 2022 led to a thaw in relations. Others have suggested the brothers simply wanted the Oasis story to have a more satisfactory conclusion than a dressing room bust-up."I've heard everything is honky dory and they're getting on great," says Tim Abbott, former managing director of Oasis's record label, Creation. "I've worked with bands in the past that had separate limos, separate walkways onto the stage. I don't think they'll get to that. They're grown men." Whatever sparked the reunion, the sold-out tour will see the band play 41 shows between July and November, spanning the UK & Ireland, North America, Oceania and South America."Probably the biggest and most pleasing surprise of the reunion announcement is how huge it was internationally," said Oasis's co-manager Alec McKinlay in an interview with Music Week."Honestly, we knew it would be big here, and that doesn't take much intuition. But looking outside the UK, we knew they had a strong fanbase, we did all the stats."We were quite cautious about what that would mean when it came to people actually buying tickets but we were just bowled over by how huge it was."McKinlay added that the band had no plans for new music, and described the tour as their "last time around".They take to the stage for the first time in 16 years at 20:15 UK time on Friday the usual rock and roll trappings, Noel Gallagher was spotted arriving for the show by train.
Daily Mail
33 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Sons of 'Fifth Beatle' George Martin square off in bitter row over father's will after producer's kids with first wife were snubbed: ALISON BOSHOFF
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Alicia: You may mock but MY Ibsen will be funny Alicia Vikander is promising audiences 'some laughs' in her next stage outing — even though it's in a play by Norwegian gloomster Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen has never been described as a barrel of laughs, but Swedish actress Vikander insists that the contemporary adaptation of The Lady From The Sea, in which she will star this autumn, will not be all hemlock and ashes. 'Simon Stone [the director and writer] has promised there will be some laughs — yes, in Ibsen!' Vikander exclaimed. The actress, who is married to Michael Fassbender, is in London for rehearsals with her leading man, Andrew Lincoln. The show will start previews at the Bridge Theatre in London on September 10. 'Ibsen is actually my first memory of being at the theatre, which is seeing Peer Gynt,' Vikander said. 'I was quite young for seeing that play. My mother was an actress and she took me there. It was an extremely profound experience.' Could J Lo's singing Spider Woman bag her an Oscar? Write off J Lo's ambitions at your peril. Film bible Variety, no less, thinks she could be in the running for a best supporting actress Oscar nomination for her performance in Kiss Of The Spider Woman. The film premiered at Sundance this year to mixed reviews – but most critics admired her performance as Aurora (pictured): a singing, dancing, screen icon she might have been 'born to play'. Lopez has made plenty of not-awards-adjacent movies for streamers in recent years and has never been nominated for an Oscar, although she did pick up a hatful of nods for the 2019 film Hustlers. But now, 27 years after she melted the screen with George Clooney in Out Of Sight, she's back. Shooting on the picture coincided pretty much exactly with the breakdown of her marriage to Ben Affleck (who has an executive producing credit through his company Artists Equity). 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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
My dream came true, his bride wrote about their wedding. Just 11 days later, Liverpool star Diogo Jota died in late-night Lamborghini crash, writes GUY ADAMS
On what would turn out to be the very last afternoon of his short life, Diogo Jota used Instagram to post a 75-second video montage of his recent wedding to Rute Cardoso, the mother of his three children. It had, he declared, been 'a day we shall never forget'. Rute, his childhood sweetheart, also posted photos of last month's festivities, which had involved a Catholic ceremony at one of Porto's most fetching Renaissance churches followed by a lavish reception at a castle in the hills outside their native city. 'My dream came true,' she said. 'But I'm the lucky one,' replied her newly-minted husband. The touching exchange, which remains online next to photos of the happy couple posing at the altar, only adds to the unspeakable sense of tragedy about the 28-year-old Liverpool footballer's sudden death, so soon afterwards. Jota's two young sons – Dinis, four, and Duarte, two – can be seen in some of the accompanying images, alongside their infant sister. They wear identical blue suits to the groom, plus a touchingly similar smile on a happy family occasion which, cruelly, is destined to be among their last memories of their father. It's perhaps a cliché to say that superstars who perish at the height of their powers were cut down in their prime. But there is surely no better way to describe the tragic loss of a role model whose recent career had taken him to the very peak of professional football. Recent weeks had not only seen Diogo Jota lift the Premier League trophy for an English club whose fans have taken him to their hearts since his arrival four years ago, but also win the Nations League with Portugal in Munich, coming on in extra time of a gripping final against rivals Spain which ended via a penalty shootout. The exact circumstances of his death in the early hours of yesterday morning, on the A-52 highway in northern Spain, are still being pieced together. However early reports suggest that Diogo and his brother Andre Silva came off the road after suffering a tyre blowout while overtaking at speed. Their car, a lime green Lamborghini Huracan Evo Spyder, a model which starts at around £188,000 and has a top speed of 202mph, appears to have then hit the central reservation before coming off the road and bursting into flames. Both Diogo and Andre, who is also a professional footballer for the Portuguese second division side Penafiel, seem to have perished by the time emergency services arrived. Photographs of the scene, near to a remote town named Cernadilla, show charred remains of the supercar next to pieces of crash barrier on the blackened grass. 'The information we have so far is that the car... was in a road traffic accident and left the road due to a tyre blowout while overtaking,' said a spokesman for Spain's Guardia Civil yesterday. 'The car caught on fire and the two occupants were killed.' The brothers are reported to have been driving through the night to Santander, from where they intended to catch a ferry to Portsmouth. Jota, who was due back in the UK for pre-season training, had been advised not to fly after having a scheduled operation on his lungs to fix an unspecified pulmonary condition just a few days earlier. In the cash-soaked and often highly rapacious world of modern football, fans are now mourning that rarest of breeds: a genuine gentleman, and model professional who wore his stratospheric wealth and talent remarkably lightly. A picture of respectability, alongside his heavily tattooed contemporaries, he played with a smile on his face and fierce work ethic, rarely berating officials or indulging in theatrics designed to secure cheap free kicks. Off the pitch, he preferred quiet domestic gatherings with childhood sweetheart Rute to the dimly lit fleshpots of Premier League lore. Perhaps his only vice was video gaming, a pursuit in which he invested endless hours, competing in the recent eSports world cup in Saudi Arabia. The family home on Merseyside reputedly contained an entire room devoted to the hobby, kitted out with special chairs and vast plasma screens. In 2021, he achieved the No.1 ranking globally in an online game FIFA Ultimate Team (later FC Ultimate Team). As for Rute, who he'd married just 12 days ago, she was a genuine childhood sweetheart. The couple had met at high school in Porto, when they were both aged 13, and chronicled their journey from love-struck teenagers to fame and fortune via social media feeds. Diogo's new wife Rute shared more wedding day pictures in a social media post yesterday and said: 'My dream come true.' Jota replied in the comments: 'I'm the lucky one.' Alongside a host of family portraits, which now take on extraordinary poignancy, their Instagram accounts contain endless images of the couple's three pet beagles, plus occasional photos of the exotic holidays that £140,000-a-week footballers are able to afford. Recent months had brought visits to Sardinia, Dubai and Lapland, while previous off seasons had taken them to the Maldives and Mauritius. Last night, the devastated Rute posted to Instagram a video of the moment Jota had proposed to her, in 2022. It begins with a footage of a picturesque lake, where a table is set up for dinner, with an engagement ring in a white box on the table. The couple can then be seen embracing and running together across a candlelit lawn. In normal circumstances, such footage might be considered schmaltzy. Given yesterday's events, it just feels incredibly sad. Jota was born Diogo José Teixeira da Silva, on December 4, 1996, and grew up in Aguiar, a working-class suburb of Porto. His father Joaquim, who in his youth had played for a lower league club called UD Sousense, worked for a crane firm, while mother Isabel was a factory worker making electronic parts for cars. Diogo and Andre both attended the local primary school and began playing football for the neighbourhood side Gondomar SC before being offered places in the youth system of Pacos de Ferreira, one of Porto's smaller professional clubs. It was here that Diogo chose to use the name 'Jota' to help distinguish himself from other players named Diogo and Silva in the organisation's youth set up. On the field, he nonetheless initially found it hard to stand out, claiming to have been less naturally talented than many of his peers. Yet like many who ultimately succeed in professional sport, he was able to navigate football's greasy pole thanks to a prodigious work ethic. 'This hunger has been with me ever since I can remember,' he told Sky Sports in 2022. 'In my youth, growing up, I never played for the big teams. I had a few teammates who went to Porto or Benfica. I had trials there but I never stayed. I was one of the better ones, but never the best.' Father Joaquim once suggested that Diogo's competitive nature was fuelled by his modest family background. 'He saw first-hand the difficulties his parents faced. We were factory workers, we didn't earn much above the minimum wage and we never hid our limitations from our children,' he told the Spanish sports magazine Maisfutebol in 2020, adding that he felt 'proud and moved' at his son's subsequent success. Jota made his debut for the Pacos de Ferreira senior side in 2014, at the age of 18, and went on to make 47 appearances as either a striker or lively right winger, before being signed by the Spanish giants Atletico Madrid two years later. They deemed him surplus to requirements, so quickly allowed him to return home on loan to Porto, where he scored nine goals in 38 appearances, before sending him to the UK, where he joined then-Championship side Wolves on loan for 2017-18, helping them achieve promotion to the Premier League as champions. His move was made permanent a few months later, and he cemented his status as a bona fide Premier League forward during their first season in the top flight, scoring nine goals as they achieved their best ever Premier League finish of seventh and qualified for the Europa League. Rute, who had followed him to the Black Country, quickly became a devoted Anglophile, posting regularly about her love of British culture, along with the TV show Peaky Blinders. Jota would eventually score 44 goals in 131 appearances for Wolves before Liverpool came calling, signing him in September 2020 for a blockbuster fee of £45 million. There he became a key figure in Jurgen Klopp's squad, playing as a centre-forward as well as a winger, and helping the side win both the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup, while also reaching the final of the Champions League. Last year head coach Arne Slot's first season at the club, Jota scored nine goals in all competitions as Liverpool won the Premier League, the first league title of Jota's career. 'Diogo was the most unassuming footballer', is how one Liverpool insider described his appeal yesterday. 'A model professional, generous with his time. While he wasn't necessarily the main man – like your Mo Salahs, or Cristiano Ronaldos at his international side Portugal – he would run all day, work his socks off, never settle for second best. 'Fans love that, because while people like him might not make all the headlines, he was the type of player you absolutely need if you are going to win the league. The sort of guy who could come on as a sub, after not playing for four games, and score a crucial goal. He'd train perfectly, look after himself, never give the manager headaches. It's just the most unspeakable tragedy that he's gone.'
