New dynasty for Samms and her GB News fiance
KNOWN for his waggish quips when reporting on the love lives of the Royal Family, news anchor Simon McCoy has a happy personal bulletin of his own: he has become engaged to 1980s pin-up Emma Samms.
‘Yes, it’s true,’ the GB News star confirms, telling me: ‘We are both so happy, as are our children.’
The couple, who live at the actress’s home in the Cotswolds, have not yet set a date but plan a joyful, post-pandemic wedding next year. ‘We shall celebrate in the spring, when it’s safe to share a party,’ McCoy, who quit the BBC earlier this year to join start-up channel GB News, tells me.
He will be the fourth husband of Samms, 61, who was one of the biggest TV stars of the 1980s, playing fiery heiress Fallon Carrington Colby in Dynasty after making her name in General Hospital. The London-born actress twice declined offers to appear in Playboy.
She divorced her third husband, the psychiatrist John Holloway, in 2003. Her previous husbands, Bansi Nagji and Tim Dillon, were both lawyers. She was previously engaged to the late American composer Marvin Hamlisch.
I disclosed in 2019 that McCoy, 59, had separated from his second wife, TV presenter Victoria Graham, 46. Former royal reporter McCoy has a grown-up son from his first marriage, while Emma has two children with Holloway. After becoming estranged from McCoy, his wife embarked on a relationship with her BBC colleague Jon Gripton, who was her editor at the Spotlight news programme for South-West England.
Victoria told me: ‘It’s been an incredibly sad time. After years of living apart, failed fertility treatment and the death of my father, life changes.’
She added: ‘Every time I see Simon on the TV I feel tremendously proud his career goes from strength to strength. We remain very good friends and still have two beautiful border terriers to love between us.’