Sophie Ellis-Bextor shares secret to 'a much happier relationship' as she celebrates her 20th wedding anniversary

You might think that after 20 years of marriage, you’ll be looking for ways to revive romance in a relationship or for tips to avoid relationship burnout, but, if anything, the opposite is true for Sophie Ellis-Bextor and her husband, Richard Jones.

Appearing on Davina McCall’s Begin Again podcast, Sophie revealed that she and her husband have “been married for a properly long time”.

It’s been two decades, with them both being “just 22” when they met back in 2002, after he auditioned for her band.

As luck would have it, he made the cut and joined Sophie on tour – though the sparks weren’t flying yet.

“I have to say I was always quite cynical when people talked about being friends with someone they later became involved with romantically. I was like, ‘how can that happen?’,”

Sophie said, as she shared that her and Richard’s love took some time to blossom. But that friendship is now exactly what Sophie credits for their long and strong partnership.

“It sets up a really healthy dynamic and it means you like each other,” Sophie said. “Because, as you know, with busy life and work life and family life, there’s lots of time where you’re just getting by. And it’s not about the big broad romantic gestures. It’s just working alongside someone, a lot of things and logistics.

“If you have actually got a good foundation of mutual like and respect and boundaries that you don’t cross within that, I think it sets you up really well for a much more happy relationship,” she added.

Later in the interview, Sophie revealed that she knew the relationship was “serious” when she found out she was pregnant, though she’d known from her and Richard’s first date that he was the one.

Sophie said, “I think it's when we found out we were having a baby, probably… Actually, you know what? That's not quite fair. I think probably from the time we had our first date, or maybe even from when we were really good friends and I realized, ‘oh, if I've got something I want to share, it’s Richard [who's] the one I want to share it with.’”

They’d been keeping their relationship quiet, but when she found out she was having a baby, that changed. “We'd been going out, I think we’d probably had a couple more dates, been going out for about six weeks. And then I realized I'm pregnant.

“Three or four months” into the relationship, about to become parents together, Sophie said that’s when she knew for sure that Richard was the one.

“I was like, ‘this is a good relationship.’ But it was the first time I'd gone out with someone kind,” she said. “It’s such an underrated quality, just someone who's nice to you and supportive.”