How I met my partner: From London to Cork, love was always on the cards for this Douglas-based couple

Content creator and independent travel advisor Emily O’Donoghue met sports marketing agency CEO Chris O’Donoghue for the first time more than 30 years ago.

As living examples of the ‘Invisible String Theory’, their romance only began to flourish many years later when Emily, then in her twenties, was pulled to London to pursue a new career.

Emily, from Cork, also known as fashionblyfortyish on Instagram, now aged 45, told The Echo that she met Chris, now aged 47, when she was just 12-years-old.

“We both went to school in Waterford, I was boarding and he was a day pupil – he was the year above me, we were friends, but we didn’t date or anything,” said Emily.

“He moved to London after school, and then when I was about 25-years-old, I moved to London as well.

“I needed somewhere to live and I remembered that my friend Chris from school had an apartment - so I emailed him, I asked if it would be okay if I moved in, and he said sure.

“After a few weeks of living with him I started to see him differently – not just as Chris from school – I started becoming aware that I might have feelings for him,” she added.

“I didn’t do anything, I didn’t tell anybody [how I felt] and that went on for about a year.”

In March of 2007, the pair decided to go on a group skiing holiday to Verbier, where Emily says she first told a friend about her feelings for her new flat mate.

“There was a big gang of us went skiing, we went to Switzerland – he was in one chalet, and I was in another,” said Emily.

“One night I said to my friend, ‘I think I might fancy him’ and she said ‘well everyone knows that,' and she basically went up to him in the pub, like we were teenagers, and played match maker.” 

Prior to this trip, like a scene straight out of Goldenberg’s Bed of Roses, Emily said that she received a surprise delivery on Valentine’s Day.

“I remember the month before that [holiday], I was working at London Fashion Week, I was on-site at the National History Museum, and my friend called me to say that 12 long-stemmed roses had been delivered to the office for me – I thought they were probably from my dad so I told her to open the card, but it said ‘thank you for being such a good friend, love Chris’.

“Then a month later, after we went skiing and got back to London, that was it – we were inseparable.”

Following their return to the UK, Emily said that the pair began to navigate their new norm, quickly settling into the idea of forever.

“I was very sure very quickly that I wanted to marry him,” said Emily.

“The following May we were in Dublin for a weekend and for the craic I said let’s have a look at rings, so we went to this jewellers off Grafton Street.

“I said to the lady that I always had my eyes set on a three diamond engagement ring, but she was quite persuasive in showing me another ring that came in – it was a beautiful sapphire – and given the borrowed time that I was on with Chris, and how persuasive she was being about the sapphire, I put it on and the minute I did I got this funny feeling and went ‘oh wow’ - I really loved it.

“Chris said then that we had to go, so we left [but] what I didn’t realise was he had called the shop about an hour later and bought it.” 

In December of 2008, while both Chris and Emily’s family were visiting the couple in London for Emily’s choir performance, Chris decided to pop the question.

"It was the most unexpected proposal, I was in the middle of making a shopping list and I turned around to get a pen and paper and he was on one knee in the kitchen – with the sapphire!,” said Emily.

Following their engagement, the pair were married in September of 2009 at Ballymaloe House in East Cork, and welcomed their first daughter, Evie, in 2011, and their second, Jessica, in 2014.

Emily said that despite a tumultuous start to parenthood, as they had experienced a scare with preeclampsia and premature births, Chris took to being a father like a duck to water.

“He got so stuck in – it was amazing,” said Emily.

“It was all so stressful, but he is an unbelievable dad – they just idolise him.

“I love our story – we're such a good team Chris and I – one of the biggest things is that we laugh so much and I love that about him. I also love how he allows me to be completely myself.

“For the last fifteen years, without fail, he delivers 12 long-stemmed roses to me on Valentine’s Day.”