Divorced couple remarry 28 years on (and son who reunited them is best man)
WHEN they met at Brands Hatch racing circuit in 1979, it was love at first sight for Annette Wensley and Duncan Gray. The couple married just two years later.
But after the birth of their son Stuart, they drifted apart and eventually divorced before losing contact for more than two decades.
Now, 28 years after going their separate ways, the pair have remarried at the race track where they met – after Stuart, now 34, asked his mother to help him find his father and the couple reconciled.
Mrs Gray, 54, said: ‘Being back with Duncan is as if we’ve never been apart. If it weren’t for Stuart we’d never have found love again. But now we have we’re making up for all the decades we spent apart.’
The couple, who remarried two weeks ago with a proud Stuart as best man, first met when Mr Gray was a young racing driver.
Mrs Gray said: ‘ I’d gone to Brands Hatch with some friends and Duncan came over for a chat. He had a gorgeous smile that made my heart pound. Within weeks we were a couple.’ They married and as his racing career took off they travelled together with baby Stuart, but drifted apart and eventually started living separate lives.
Over the next 20 years both began relationships with others, losing contact until 2009 when Stuart asked his mother to help him find his father. After ringing old friends they found Mr Gray, who’d
‘The old feelings flooded back’
moved 200 miles from Chatham, Kent, to South Yorkshire.
Mrs Gray, a sales manager, said: ‘I stayed in the car while Stuart knocked on Duncan’s door. A few hours later he came back and said it had been great to see his father again but that he was recovering from bowel cancer. That was a terrible shock.’
Three months later she got a surprise email from her former husband and from then on they regularly chatted online, but as they were both in new relationships they never met.
When both became single again they began to speak more frequently but still they never met – until last September when Mrs Gray suddenly received a shocking phone call from Mr Gray to say he had internal bleeding.
She said: ‘As he was rushed into surgery he said he’d never stopped loving me. In that moment I knew I felt the same but I wondered if it would be too late.’
Thankfully he made it through and she rushed to his side. ‘My heart was pounding as we hadn’t seen one another in 28 years. But as soon as I set eyes on Duncan all the old feelings flooded back.’
Mr Gray, 58, now a motorsport instructor, said: ‘We fell into one another’s arms. I was back with my soulmate.’
Mrs Gray added: ‘Without Stuart, Duncan and I would never have found love again. We are a complete family again.’