Charlotte Church asked for rugby star’s permission to date husband | Rugby | Sport

Charlotte Church started dating her husband just weeks after splitting with Welsh rugby icon Gavin Henson. The duo had been together for five years, welcomed two children and were briefly engaged. But Church pursued another romance just weeks after their 2010 breakup.

Shortly after news emerged she was seeing musician Jonathan Powell – now her husband – Church disclosed she felt obligated to seek Henson’s approval before making things official. “I’d been writing with Johnny for a while, but it was a good couple of months after me and Gav split,” she told the BBC in 2010.

“I kind of asked Gav’s permission in a way. I said to him, ‘I really want you to know that nothing ever went on between me and Johnny while we were still together.’

“Johnny had a girlfriend when we were first working together, and I had Gav. And I’m not that type of person. I hadn’t really noticed any feelings at that point. When I’m a taken woman, I’m a taken woman – that’s the way I see things.”

Church started seeing Henson, who earned 33 caps for Wales and also represented the British and Irish Lions, in 2005.

Two years later, their daughter Ruby was born and in 2009, their son Dexter arrived.

Branded ‘the Welsh Posh and Becks’, their romance was reported extensively in the media, which had a considerable impact on the couple.

“The press intrusion was insane, there was all sorts of dark stuff going on,” Church said earlier this month ahead of her appearance on The Celebrity Traitors.

“There were stories in the papers all the time and lots of things were blown up, misconstrued and made seedy – when they really weren’t. There was a lot of shame being thrown at me, with the press desperately trying to make me a figure of sin and push this ‘fallen angel’ narrative.”

Church revealed her anger and resistance during the ordeal helped her endure the media attention and coverage.

“If I had let that shame in, or internalised it, my life could have gone in a very different way,” she revealed.

On the surface, their celebrity romance appeared like something from a fairy tale.

However, beneath the glamour, difficulties were gradually surfacing, with the couple leading completely contrasting lifestyles.

“We were such different people in every way,” Church confessed years later.

“That was amazing at the start, as we were always teaching each other new things. Then we were just too different. Different beliefs in everything.

“His world was alien to me. All that training. He’s so strict with what he eats, what time he goes to sleep. And my life was alien to him. I don’t think it [the split] was about arguing. I think one day we just thought, ‘What are we doing?’ Nevertheless, when Gavin proposed, Charlotte was “overjoyed”.

However, when the rugby star jetted off to Norway for filming several weeks afterwards, something fundamentally shifted.

“It was amazing. I really was going to marry Gav and spend the rest of my life with him,” Church recalled. “But then he came back from Norway, and he’d changed, and I’d had time to think. We had both had a change of heart – so we were both of the same mind.”

Despite parting ways, Charlotte and Gavin maintain a cordial relationship, with both taking active parts in bringing up their now-teenage children.

The pair have since wed other partners, with Church marrying Powell in 2017 before having a daughter, Frida, in 2020.

Henson, meanwhile, wed long-term girlfriend Katie Mould in 2019.