They have been married for 12 blissful years, and have since welcomed three children together. However, Holly Willoughby has revealed her first meeting with then future husband Dan Baldwin didn't go as smoothly as many might have hoped. Speaking to Keith Lemon on his Christmas Shopping special, the 38-year-old admitted that due to Dan's past working for MTV she thought he was "too cool for school" to be her dream man.
© Photo: Getty ImagesHolly has been married to Dan for 12 years
Giving fans a rare insight into the early days of their relationship, Holly told Keith that it took a long time for her and Dan to become "really good friends" and that it certainly wasn't love at first sight when they first met when he joined one of her TV projects as a producer. "Dan was there as a new producer and I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going to hate this guy,'" she explained.
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The This Morning presenter met her husband while she was working as a children's television presenter on Ministry of Mayhem in 2004, which Dan was producing at the time. The pair were friends for six months before they started dating, and managed to keep their relationship a secret for an impressive eight months before revealing that they were a couple.
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When asked if she harboured a crush on Dan from the start, the mum-of-three replied: "No, not at all and he'd come from MTV and he was very cool for school. He looked at me like I was this wally of a person. I thought, 'Oh my God he hates me, he just thinks he's really cool.'" She added: "Then we became really good friends. We were in the bar and we cheers-ed in regards to champagne and I looked at him and it was like, 'Oh my God, I fancy him.' In that second I just knew, it was like a little sparkle."
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The couple tied the knot in August 2007, and then went on to become parents to sons Harry, ten, and Chester, five, and eight-year-old daughter Belle. During a recent segment on This Morning about workplace romances, and whether or not they are a good idea, Holly said: "It's quite a normal way to meet someone. It doesn't always have to be some sort of illicit affair. It can be quite a lovely, nice thing."
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