Carol Vorderman with her pilot boyfriend Graham "Duffy" Duff

Entertainment

Twice-married Carol Vorderman is proud mother of a daughter & a son. More on her husbands & boyfriends

By Mandy Price

June 22, 2017

Carol Vorderman, a proud mother of two children: a daughter and a son, has said she won’t get married again. Carol admits that going through divorces and relationships is not a bad thing, however, putting up with a bad one is.

Carol Vorderman married for the first time on a rebound

After Carol’s on and off boyfriend, who was then working in New Zealand, got involved with another woman, she decided to end it. She then got married to Christopher Mather, a Royal Navy Officer, in 1985. 

She accepted Chris’s marriage proposal shortly after they began dating, which she thought was a right decision at that time. However, she later realized it as the greatest mistake of her life as the marriage ended within 12 months. In an interview with Daily Mail in 2010, she talked about the doubt she had while marrying Chris.

My ­wedding to a young man I didn’t know was drawing closer. Richard Whiteley was one of the ­people who took me to one side at that time and asked me, quietly: ‘Are you sure you are doing the right thing?’ I assured him I was, with a certainty that, deep down, I didn’t feel. – Carol Vorderman

She even admits that she does not consider the first time as a marriage. As a result of not thinking meticulously about the marriage, the couple started having problems not long after they got married. The painful experience ended after just twelve months.

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Carol remained with Patrick King, her children’s dad for a decade

After the divorce, she was focusing primarily on her career and started working more in London. That’s when she met Paddy King (Patrick), a management consultant, at a friend’s party in Cambridge. She recalls her memory of her baby daddy as:

Paddy and I met at the wedding of one of my Cambridge friends in 1988. He had a sharp brain and an even sharper sense of humour and we started dating. – Carol Vorderman

The couple got married in 1990, two years after their first meeting. With Paddy, she gave birth to two children. Her daughter, Katie, was born in 1992 and son, Cameron, was born in 1997. She had been such a workaholic during that time as she felt insecure remembering her troubled childhood with financial instability.

She went back to work three months after her daughter’s birth but stayed home for three weeks while her son was born. During that time, she had become the highest-paid TV host but wasn’t able to spend time at home with her little kids and loving husband.

Eventually, she and Paddy decided to separate. Their decade-long marriage was ended in 2000. Divorce was certainly not easy but, there were more horrible days when Carol couldn’t spend time with husband and children.

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Carol Vorderman feels silly about 14 year age gap with ex-boyfriend Graham Duff

In 2001, she was involved in a live-in relationship with sports columnist Des Kelly. She moved to London with Des and her two kids in order to accommodate for her work and her children’s schools. Her mom, who had been by her side in every high and low, also shifted to a flat in the same building.

Their 5-year long courtship ended in 2006. They made a public announcement of their amicable break-up in 2007.

She was just focused on her work and children for several years until she and Graham ‘Duffy’ Duff, a Red Arrows veteran met at her fundraising event for the RAF. The romantic twosome started dating in 2011. She once said in an interview, “There’s nothing not to love about Duffy.”

Duffy being younger than her did not pose any threat to the relationship at the beginning, but she eventually ended up breaking up with him. In an interview in 2016, she explained how it was silly of her to get involved with a much younger partner.

Carol Vorderman recently bid farewell to her mother

Vorderman owes most, if not all, of her success to her mother Jean. According to Carol, she could not have made it through her career and, needless to say, painful relationships, without her mother’s support. But recently, she lost her guardian angel to terminal cancer at the age of 88.

Jean, who had fought cancer three times previously, suffered from multiple tumors and decided not to have any treatment. She found solace in her family’s presence rather than seeking treatment. Carol announced her mother’s passing via Twitter on 19th June 2017.