Just months after celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, Jamie Oliver has revealed the secret to his long-lasting marriage to wife Jools.
“I wouldn’t be the first to say opposites attract,” Oliver said in an interview with Good Housekeeping, a UK lifestyle magazine.
“We get on very well and we genuinely like each other, but we’re also very different,” he continued.
“That can create a certain tension, but it also seems to work, and I feel very blessed to have had 25 years.”
In the interview he also said that while their marriage might look easy from the outside, they still have their fair share of problems and that they were “just wrestling through like anyone else”.
“[It’s important] not to hold grudges, and to try to communicate as much as possible,” he said.
“Sometimes it doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong and, ultimately, I just want Jools to be happy.”
Jools, whose real name is Juliette Norton, and Oliver first met as teenagers when they were studying at Westminster Technical College.
The celebrity chef fell first, after seeing her in class, but only mustered up the courage to ask her out on a double date to the movies a year later, but the date didn’t go too smoothly.
“We were driving there that night and then I went smashing into the back of another car,” he said in a previous interview on Alan Carr: Chatty Man.
At one point in their relationship, they had to do long-distance, when Jools went to Japan for three months for a modelling gig.
After she returned, the pair became inseparable, and moved into a small flat together while Oliver worked in the kitchen at the renowned River Cafe, London.
The couple tied the knot in July 2000, just one year after Oliver appeared in his own TV show, The Naked Chef.
They have since renewed their marriage vows twice, first in the Maldives in 2023 and then in Las Vegas in 2024.
The couple share five children together, Poppy Honey Rosie, Daisy Boo Pamela, Petal Blossom Rainbow, Buddy Bear Maurice and River Rocket.
Images: Instagram
