‘Emmy wanted me to be happy’ – Jake finds new love after tragedy
AWELSHMAN who raised £142,000 for charity as his wife was dying of cancer has given his first interview with his new love.
Jake Coates, 33, sparked a furious backlash from his late wife’s grieving family when he found love with mumof-one Jenna Elsby just six months later.
Her sister Sophie publicly attacked him for “disrespecting” her sister who, she claimed, would be “heartbroken”, and followers of his late wife Emmy Collett’s inspirational blog also spoke out angrily.
He now lives with Jenna, 33, and her four-year-old son Charlie, and has now given his first interview.
He said that Emmy wanted him to be happy and had told him that. He also said he felt destined to be with Jenna.
Jake, who was born in Monmouth, married childhood sweetheart Emmy Collett, from Chepstow, while she was terminally ill after being told she had thyroid cancer. They won hearts across the UK and raised a huge amount for The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, completing a 2,000km tandem bike ride on June 2016.
Sadly Emmy, 31, passed away on June 16, 2017, just a year after they married.
Speaking to The Mirror, Jake has explained that Emmy wanted him “to be happy” and “to meet someone” as he responded to her sister Sophie’s claims that Emmy would be “heartbroken”.
He said: “It’s tough when you get messages from people close to you saying negative things.
“But people deal with grief in different ways and those messages were coming from a place of hurt.
“I will never personally say anything against Emmy’s family but I did feel let down. I think if I had come out and said I had a girlfriend then, now or even a year from now, it would have been a hard pill for some people to swallow.
“Emmy wanted me to be happy. She wanted me to meet someone, she told me that.”
Jake has continued to raise money for the Royal Marsden Hospital in London by running marathons, and he even accepted an award for Fundraiser of the Year on behalf of his late wife at the Pride of Britain awards.
It was shortly after this that marketing expert and lifestyle writer Jenna got in touch with him.
She said: “I knew of Jake through a mutual friend at school and I wanted to help, so I got in touch and offered him my marketing services.
“I didn’t know much about his story because I’d been living abroad and then in my own merry hell going through a divorce with Charlie’s dad.”
The pair realised that they had a lot in common, with Jenna growing up in Chepstow and both of them having lived in Australia. Jenna had lived with her husband and son there and Jake worked nearby as a doctor at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney.
During Jenna’s separation from her husband, she lost a friend to suicide and a very close friend to cancer.
“It’s something I lived through,” she said. “We were just in a really similar situation. Bad stuff had happened and we were both a bit war-beaten. But we both have a really similar outlook, which is it’s about the here and now and looking forward and creating happiness every day.”
Jake and Jenna arranged a business lunch in London at Christmas time after they had been messaging.
Jenna said: “We went into that business lunch with professional heads on but the conversations were informal from the get-go. Our pasts were linked. We came away feeling things maybe we shouldn’t have been feeling. I felt like I’d known Jake my whole life.
“Jake is not defined by his past in the same way I’m not defined by mine. There was an obvious connection between us and you have to open your heart to love again. In honour of those who can’t live a life, I know I have a responsibility to make every day count.”
Jake said: “I absolutely had no intention of meeting anybody at that time.”
“It was the most unexpected thing. I was just trying to keep my head straight and focused and it was the last thing on my mind.
“She walked out of Covent Garden tube stop and she was all smiles. I fancied her a lot quite quickly.
“I didn’t even know I was ready for another relationship until I met Jenna. No one was more surprised than me.
“Jenna and Charlie played a huge part in helping me out of a dark place. They brought the sunshine back into my life again.
“Towards the end of our first meeting – which ended up lasting about 10 hours – I actually leaned in for a kiss and she gave me a bit of a telling-off.”
After arranging a proper date, their relationship blossomed, and in February they travelled to Iceland for their first trip away together.
Jake made their relationship public after he posted a photo on Instagram of Jenna on a train station platform which received a number of negative comments, with some calling Jenna ‘ugly,’ ‘evil’ and ‘a rebound.’
“I didn’t expect to get such a negative backlash,” Jake said. “I thought people would be happy to see me smiling with a gorgeous girl. But for every message that said something like, ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this’ there were 10 messages of support.”
Jenna added: “Those people being negative don’t understand how deep our feelings are for one another and how cautiously and respectfully we have approached this relationship.”
The couple now live in Surrey and are planning children as well as a book about their lives.
Jake says that he ‘will always, always’ want to raise money for the Royal Marsden Hospital and that he’ll ‘always be proud of Emmy.’