Ben Foden says he was ‘wrong’ to marry his second wife, Jackie Belanoff, on the day his divorce from Una Healy was finalised.
The former rugby star split from The Saturdays singer in 2018 after six years of marriage and two children – daughter Aoife, eight, and son Tadhg, five. It was reported at the time that Ben had cheated on Una which he has since admitted.
Since their split, Ben has remarried to Jackie and welcomed their first child together, daughter Farrah.
Opening up about his whirlwind romance with Jackie, who he married after two weeks, Ben told presenter Sharon Carpenter in an Instagram Live: ‘I hold my hands up and say, it was wrong. My final decree didn’t even come through until the morning of us getting married.’
He later added: ‘People will say I wasn’t very respectful in what I did, getting married to Jackie very quickly, but you can’t help the heart and we’ve got past it.’
Una, 38, has been open about the fallout from her divorce from Ben, 35, and recently admitted she suffered ‘trauma’ having to deal with the end of their marriage in the public eye.
Recalling the media attention, Ben explained: ‘I was so surprised at how big a news it was. When I chatted to Jackie about it, my agent messaged me and was like, “There’s rumours that you’ve got married, is this true?” I text him saying it is true, he was like you need to announce it before it gets out.’
The father-of-three continued: ‘I still want a private life, Una deserves a private life so we shouldn’t have to explain ourselves every time we do an interview about what happened in our marriage.
‘We’re two people who respect each other and we’ll always love each other because we have kids. There was a little bad blood between us for now. Now we’re just trying to raise two kids in the best environment we can.
‘I want her to have a really loving relationship with the next guy she meets.’
Ben, who has now relocated to New York with his new family, also denied meeting his second wife on Tinder as was rumoured at the time.
Instead, they were introduced through a mutual friend who Ben actually dated aged 21 while attending university in Manchester.
‘When I met Jackie, she was like no one I’ve ever met before in so many departments. She’s very independent, very free-spirited,’ he said of his new wife.
‘She was at a point where she was like, ‘I want to meet someone and get married and have kids. Even though in my head I was like, “Oh I don’t really want to do that”, I knew she’d make such a good mum.
‘I knew she’d be really kind and respectful to my other kids from my other marriage.’
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