The only happy ending from TV show that has made a mockery of marriage
... is the one couple that DIDN’T get hitched on the show. As for the two who DID, a bed of roses it ain’t!
DESPITE the fledgling nature of their relationship, Sam McDonald and Jack FinnKelcey already agree on many things. And one issue resoundingly so. ‘We are both incredibly glad we didn’t do it,’ says Sam. For well-matched as they may be, if things had gone differently Sam, 30, a chartered surveyor, and 29-year-old former paratrooper Jack would now be husband and wife, bound by a solemn contract, despite the fact they had never set eyes on each other, let alone spoken, before their wedding day.
Both had been decreed a perfect match by a panel of ‘experts’, including a social anthropologist and a vicar, on the Channel 4 TV series Married At First Sight, which ended on Thursday.
The broadcaster touted the programme as a groundbreaking social experiment to see whether science could determine the success of a long-term relationship. But others accused the programme of being a tawdry, cynical drive for ratings.
Either way, Sam got cold feet two weeks before her February nuptials and pulled out, leaving two other couples to march to the altar.
But we can reveal today that not only have this couple now met, they appear to have fallen head over heels for each other. Openly physically affectionate and having spent most of the past fortnight together, they are very much a couple. ‘It’s too early to talk about love,’ says Sam, ‘ but we have an amazing connection.’
Far too shy to discuss exactly how far their relationship has gone, they reveal they’re planning to meet each other’s parents.
So, what of the two couples who did tie the knot on the show?
Well, on Thursday’s programme we learned that one of them does at least remain married. Londoners James OrdHume, 33, a university programmes manager, and his 32-year-old events manager bride Emma Rathbone, were understood to be on holiday together this week, five months into their union.
But, even so, members of their own families claim they aren’t as yet living together. Alas, it is less sunny tidings for personal trainer Kate Stewart, 31, and financial advisor Jason Farns worth-Knowles, also both from London. They split up less than two weeks after their February wedding — with Jason taking to the dating app Tinder before he had told his bride their marriage was over.
There’s no disputing both unions made for compelling viewing. Ironically, Emma and James seemed the most illat- ease during the register office ceremony, managing a few awkward giggles and peck on the cheek.
Indeed, they openly admitted they didn’t fancy each other that much. Emma said: ‘Physically, we’ve both said, if we met in the pub, we probably wouldn’t stop for each other. Obviously, attraction is important and can affect your sexual relationship, so we have some work to do in that area.’
Meanwhile, Miss Rathbone’s mother Elisabeth said: ‘They still live separately at the moment.
‘I don’t know if that will change, I don’t know what they have discussed. They don’t have room to live in each other’s homes as they both live in flats. I don’t know how often they see each other, obviously at weekends. I honestly don’t know if it will work out long term. All I can say is they seem to get on well. I’m hoping it will work.’
Mrs Rathbone, 70, has been married to her husband Roger for 36 years. It was revealed during the series that Mr Rathbone, a company director for a machinery firm in Macclesfield, refused to walk his daughter down the aisle.
‘Roger has a more traditional view of marriage, absolutely,’ she said. ‘His first reaction was “How stupid is that?” He thought it was a joke. Emma accepted his decision. I think she may have liked him to walk her down the aisle, but it wasn’t going to happen.’
The other couple, Jason and Kate, seemed delighted with their match on their wedding day, and there was definitely a frisson of sexual tension between them. Yet one person who isn’t surprised that the ‘marriage’ didn’t last is Kate’s father Peter. The 64-year-old retired construction designer says he’s baffled how anyone could have considered his resolutely unmaterialistic daughter an excellent match for ‘City boy’ Jason.
A divorcee himself after separating from Kate’s mother Mary when she was ten, Peter raised Kate and her younger brother Robert alone at the family home in a village outside Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire.
‘Five experts were helping to choose her husband, yet they did not meet the families, which is what would normally happen for an arranged marriage,’ he said. ‘Kate had to fill in questionnaires for the producers and she’d said she wanted someone with the same temperament and interests as her.
‘She’s not materialistic or moneyorientated, so I don’t understand why they chose someone who was in investments to be her husband.’
Others may ask a different question: why a beautiful, apparently caring and intelligent girl like Kate would take such a drastic solution to finding lasting love?
The answer, says Peter, lies in the frenetic pace of modern life. ‘Kate and my two nieces in London say there are not many available men. Kate is a personal trainer, gets up at 5.30am, does not get home until 10.30pm and doesn’t have much time for a social life.’
Nonetheless he was ‘gobsmacked’ when on Boxing Day last year his daughter told him about her plans to take part in the show, although he did agree to walk her down the aisle. ‘She’s 31 and an adult and was quite adamant this was what she wanted to do,’ he says. ‘I asked her if she was certain and she said she was.’
His first impressions of his son-in-law were not, it must be said, favourable. ‘As I walked her down the aisle, I saw Jason for the first time, in his check suit, and thought “Anyone who wears a suit like that to a wedding must be a character.” It wouldn’t be the sort of suit I’d wear for a wedding. I thought “Let’s hope this marriage works.” ’
The signs were initially promising: on her return from the couple’s three-day honeymoon in Dublin, Kate told her father she had had a lovely time. But within days, Jason had gone out drinking two nights on the trot rather than coming home to his new bride. Then, less than two weeks after they had married, Kate arrived home to find Jason had packed his bags, while a friend also told her Jason was active on the online dating app Tinder.
Jason said this week: ‘I just wasn’t feeling the feelings you should feel at the start of a relationship,’ he said.
Both couples were given six weeks to make it work, after which they could divorce, the costs covered by Channel 4. Kate, however, is going through the process of having the marriage annulled as, according to Mr Stewart, it was never consummated.
He says: ‘The last time I spoke to her on the phone, she said: “Dad, it’s over, there’s no point in talking about it.” ’
The news of the humiliating, public split reinforces Jack and Sam’s conviction they had a lucky escape. Initially, Channel 4 refused to pass on either of their telephone numbers. But the power of social media prevailed, and the couple met up in secret two weeks ago.
‘I can’t believe I was ever thinking about marriage,’ says Sam. ‘I can categorically say we wouldn’t have worked if we’d married. We watched that episode and felt so tense, thinking it could have been us. I was pretty much
‘I was about to do the craziest thing
I’ve ever done’ After two weeks he was using an online dating app
watching through my fingers.’ But the couple are getting on famously. ‘I think the experts have done a good job — we got on the moment we met and are getting along like a house on fire, but that’s because there’s no pressure,’ says Sam.
‘We can just get on with things and see what unfolds naturally.’
But what possessed them to take part in the show in the first place? Like Kate, Sam also seems a surprising candidate. An attractive, bubbly blonde, she was raised in Guildford alongside her five younger brothers by her property developer parents and f ollowed in their footsteps, studying property at Oxford Brookes University.
She qualified as a chartered surveyor in her early 20s and has worked in the business ever since, initially in Leeds and latterly in London.
It was through work that she heard Channel 4 were looking for people to take part in the show. ‘The production company sent an email to my office asking if anyone was interested and someone said “Sam you’ve got to apply.”
‘I’m the kind of person who will give anything a go and I was intrigued by the science part,’ she says.
Largely single for the past two years after a previous five-year relationship had come to an end, she felt she didn’t have much to lose — but she never really believed she’d find a match. ‘It started as a bit of fun — the prospect of getting married seemed so remote,’ she says. ‘Then I was down to the last ten, and suddenly I had a match. So it went from playful experiment to realising I was about to do the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my life.’
The moment she was told, captured on film in the first episode, makes her discomfort clear. ‘I was out of my depth,’ she says. ‘I felt hugely stressed.’ In Sam’s case the stress rippled outwards, to her mother and stepfather, who had raised her since she was six (her father died nine years ago). Initially supportive, they were horrified by the prospect of Sam getting married to a stranger and made it clear they did not want her to go ahead.
Today she has they only had her best interests at heart. ‘For me family is the most important thing,’ she says. ‘You respect the fact that they have brought you up to have morals. They have very rarely said to me don’t do something. And it was absolutely the right decision. Once I had decided there was just absolute relief.’
As revealed in the Mail this month, Jack was left disconsolate. He believed he might never get a chance to meet the woman selected as his ideal bride. A Twitter frenzy ensued, with the result that by the next day Sam was furnished with Jack’s mobile phone number.
‘I sent him a message saying “Hi Jack, it’s Sam, I’m sorry I jilted you at the altar.” I worried he might not appreciate my sense of humour but I figured that if we were as good a match as the professionals had predicted then he should get it.’
He did. ‘I texted back to say “You’d better be as you’re buying the drinks.” I was really pleased to hear from her.’ The pair arranged to meet next day — a Saturday — at 2pm in the middle of London’s Westminster Bridge.
The pressure was off, but both confess to enormous nerves.
‘Walking over that bridge I still felt as nervous as I think I’ve ever been,’ says Sam. ‘It was odd — even though it wasn’t the same high stakes, a part of my brain was contemplating the fact I was about to meet a man who I
‘Hello — Sorry I jilted you at the altar’
could potentially have been spending the rest of my life with.’
She needn’t have worried: both hit it off instantly. ‘It was really easy,’ says Jack. ‘ On most dates you’re not entirely yourself, you’re trying to impress. But there was none of that. We were open and talked for hours.’
Sam agrees. ‘We learned more about each other that day than other people do in months. Having been through this experience it felt like nothing was off the table.’
And crucially, there were no cameras. ‘Aside from getting married, the presence of the cameras would have changed everything,’ says Jack. ‘I don’t think we could have talked in the same way if we knew everything we said could be broadcast.’
Today, Kate and Jason are left to contemplate the wreckage of a pitifully short marriage.
His daughter remains pragmatic, Peter insists. She has already been on a series of dates with an old acquaintance and is determined not to be too bruised by the experience.
Sam and Jack wish the others well. Two weeks into their relationship, he has already put on hold his plans to return to Malawi where he had been working for an anti-poaching charity, to pursue job opportunities in the UK and spend more time with Sam.
She, in turn, feels optimistic about their future. ‘Even if the science has something to it, I don’t agree with the marriage part of the programme,’ she says. ‘It takes away from the essence of what marriage is. It’s dating, getting to know each other, falling in love rather than being forced to make it work.’ Could anyone really disagree with that?