Is two weeks after your wife’s funeral too soon to meet your new love?
They knew there’d be cruel jibes — so cricket hero Chris Broad didn’t go public about his new girlfriend. Now they’re finally ready to face the question . . .
anniversary of their meeting — they got engaged.
‘I think Chris has decided that there’s only going to be one significant date in our relationship,’ jokes Rosemarie. Does that mean they are planning to get married on August 17, 2015? ‘Probably,’ she says. ‘But we haven’t set a date yet.’
The proposal was suitably romantic, as Chris explains. ‘It was our anniversary, so we were going out for a meal, but I’d also been asked to go to a a football game for work. I’d planned it all — made up the ring and bought it — and I tried to work out when in the day I was going to do it.
‘Worried there wouldn’t be enough time, I decided to do it before we went to the football. So I planted the ring in the kitchen while Rosemarie was getting herself ready. The idea was that I would be in the kitchen when she came downstairs, ready to ask.
But she came down too soon; I hadn’t heard her. She started walking over to the sink, and I’d left the ring on the sideboard, so I ran into the kitchen after her and said that she looked gorgeous but there was one thing that was slightly wrong. While she was asking what, I turned around, picked up the ring and then went down on one knee, and asked her to to marry me.
‘She started shaking and saying: “Oh my God, oh my God.”
‘After about 30 seconds of being on my knee, she was still saying “Oh my God,” so I had to say, “So what’s your answer then?”
It was, of course, a yes. Rosemarie claims she had absolutely no idea that Chris had planned to propose.
Is Mandy going to be the matron of honour at the wedding? ‘She’s certainly going to play a large part in it,’ says Chris.
They don’t talk about Miche much, but she continues to have a big presence in their relationship, thanks to the Broad Appeal, the charity which Chris and Miche set up together shortly before her death to raise awareness of motor neurone disease. Rosemarie is now involved in running the charity too.
Last week, she and Chris took part in the Ice Bucket Challenge to raise money to fight the disease.
‘Sometimes it is hard for me,’ she admits. ‘Usually, when someone is dead they are in the past, but Miche is never completely in the past because of the charity. But I accept that the charity is a big part of Chris’s life, and it’s something that I very actively support.’
Chris is sure Miche would be delighted that he is with Rosemarie.
‘I think in some ways they are fairly similar. Rosemarie is also someone who has a love of life and who likes to laugh. Miche would be happy that I am happy.’
The Broad Appeal is holding a dinner at Lord’s on October 2. Visit thebroadappeal.org