So in love ... but Kate and her fiancé’s joyful smiles hide heartbreak
Minister’s partner lost his f irst wife, leaving him to raise 3 kids
SHE announced last week that a ‘brave man’ had asked her to marry him.
Finance Secretary Kate Forbes was thrilled to say yes to businessman Alasdair Maclennan – but behind their happiness is both a heartbreaking tale of loss and the joy of new beginnings.
For Mr Maclennan’s first wife died tragically young – leaving him to raise their three children. MSP Miss Forbes even helped to raise funds at an event to honour the memory of his late spouse.
Only a year after the pair were pictured dancing together at a charity ceilidh, they are now engaged. Miss Forbes, 30, shared their happy news on social media late last month, alongside a picture of her engagement ring.
She wrote: ‘Having launched the Wedding Fund today, I should declare an interest as a brave man asked me to marry him on a snowy local walk over the last few days and I said yes. No plans yet for a wedding – there’s plenty of Budget work to manage first. Some rare happy news.’
Hundreds of messages of congratulations were sent to the couple.
Mr Maclennan, 40, popped the question during a walk in the Highlands.
Ms Forbes told a local newspaper:
‘Ali has a small business in the Highlands, so has faced the same worries and challenges of other small businesses over the last year. He’s a resident of Dingwall, though hails from the small village of Shieldaig [on the shores of the West Coast]. We’ve known one another for many years and share a lot of similar interests.’
Mr Maclennan owns a share of Firework Chimney Sweep, which specialises in maintainence and cleaning in the Highlands and Central Belt.
He is also a time-served builder who specialises in wood-burning stoves.
Mr Maclennan met his late wife, Priya Rao, in India.
They married there before moving to Scotland and having three children – Rachael, Rebekah and Zak. Mrs Maclennan died suddenly, at the age of only 38, at the family home in Evanton, near Dingwall, Ross-shire, in October 2014.
In December 2019, Ms Forbes helped Rachael to raise funds so she could to travel to India to teach English to disadvantaged children – in honour of her late mother. Events held to bring in cash included a ceilidh attended by Ms Forbes, who spent some of her childhood in India.
At the time, Ms Forbes said: ‘Rachael is a lovely young woman who wants to help people after she leaves Dingwall Academy next year. I am really impressed that she has chosen to raise money to travel to India next year off her own back.
‘She’s got a lot of money to raise and, if everybody chips in, then it will be a lot easier to get there.
‘I am sure Rachael will make a big difference to all the children she teaches, and I look forward to hearing how many young Indian children can speak Gaelic by the time that Rachael has finished.’
Ms Forbes was pictured dancing with Mr Maclennan at the ceilidh in January of last year.
Now, a year later, the couple are to be married.
It was reported at the time that
‘A brave man asked me to marry him and I said yes’
‘Indian children will be able to speak Gaelic’
Ms Maclennan would return to her late mother’s homeland after being accepted by Project Trust as an English primary teacher. She would spend a year in Hyderabad.
Ms Forbes’s Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency includes Dingwall – her home town.
A graduate of the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh, she was an accountant before becoming an MSP. She made history in 2018 as the first female MSP to give a plenary speech in the Scottish parliament entirely in Gaelic.
She was promoted to Finance Secretary in February last year, after Derek Mackay resigned following revelations he had sent hundreds of social media messages to a 16-year-old boy.
Announcing Ms Forbes’s promotion, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would ‘drive forward our economy, support our key industries and maintain Scotland’s long tradition as an outward-looking, dynamic and enterprising nation’.