Matt Willis recalls disastrous first date with Emma Willis
Matt and Emma Willis first met in 2004, and they started dating the following year before tying the knot in 2008.
Matt Willis' glamorous first date with Emma Willis ended up a disaster.
After the presenter interviewed him and his Busted bandmates, James Bourne, 42, and Charlie Simpson, 41, for MTV in 2004, Matt, now 43, tried to impress Emma, now 50, by taking her to a "really posh" restaurant, but it backfired when she did not like anything on the menu.
He is quoted by the new issue of Bella magazine as saying: "I tried to pick a really posh restaurant when me and Emma had our first date because I knew her as this glamorous woman who was a model and on MTV.
"So I picked this really swanky restaurant, but Emma couldn't eat anything on the menu because she didn't like any of it. She was asking me what foie gras was.
"I could have chosen somewhere way cheaper!"
Emma - who started dating Matt in 2005 - added: "He didn't realise he was going out with someone from Birmingham who didn't care!
"I'd normally be in Mr Egg at 3am!"
The new host of Strictly Come Dancing was not really a fan of the Year 3000 hitmakers until she got to know Matt, and Emma even tried to stop him when he got down on one knee to propose.
On an August 2024 episode of the NewlyWeds podcast, she said: "I wasn’t into them when I met him, but then when I met him, and I got to know him, and kind of saw him in action.
"He whipped out this box, and he started to drop, and I just grabbed him around the neck. I went, 'Don’t you dare.' I was like, 'Oh, there’s loads of people around, and they’re all gonna look at us and oh, my God, how embarrassing.'"
The Love Is Blind presenters tied the knot at Rushton Hall Hotel and Spa in Northamptonshire in July 2008.
However, the pair sought professional help to save their marriage after they realised there were a couple of "sticking points" they could not see eye to eye on, with Emma reluctantly agreeing to Matt's therapy suggestion.
She said: "That was a big switch for us, actually, and we didn’t go because we were in trouble, we didn’t go because we were like, this is a sinking ship.
"We were like, there’s a couple of sticking points here that we can’t understand each other’s viewpoints on. So let’s get a third party to try and figure out why we can’t see where each other’s coming on.
"Matt was the one that suggested, actually, I’d never had therapy. I was like, 'I’m all right, nothing wrong with me.'
"Another example of when Matt was right."
The former Big Brother host and the What I Go to School For artist have three children, daughters Isabelle, 17, and Trixie, 10, and a 14-year-old son named Ace.
