Monty Don has opened up about his marriage and his feelings about taking his friend’s wife – admitting he doesn’t feel bad about it and has no regrets.
The Gardeners’ World star, 68, fell for his now wife Sarah while she was already married to a wealthy botanist – at the time socialising with both her and her husband and even going riding with him.
But when Sarah’s then husband went away for work, she and Monty fell for each other and she eventually decided to finish with her husband.
Speaking openly about the ‘complicated’ situation, Monty admitted that despite his guilt he had to be ruthless, saying: ‘I thought it was great, it was wonderful. I’m so glad.’
Monty met Sarah at Cambridge University when he was a penniless student, but after they eventually ended up embarking on a relationship they headed for the Yorkshire Moors, where they rented a place together and did odd jobs for their landlord.
Monty Don has opened up about his marriage and his feelings about taking his friend’s wife – admitting he doesn’t feel bad about it and has no regrets, (pictured in 2017)
The Gardeners’ World star, 68, fell for his now wife Sarah while she was already married to a wealthy botanist – at the time socialising with both her and her husband and even going riding with him
He later proposed on a rowing boat in Scotland, refusing to row back to land until Sarah changed her mind after she at first said she wasn’t sure, then he secretly booked the marriage for less than a week after returning home – giving Sarah 48 hours’ notice.
But he also said there had been tough times in their marriage, with Sarah at one point threatening to leave him with their three children because of his depression if he did not seek help.
Monty said: ‘It was obviously complicated. I don’t think it was love at first sight. I think it was intense attraction at first sight.
‘Her husband was someone that I rode with and knew very well, and that was the case for about six months where I’d meet them socially.
‘I remember thinking in a sort of quite banal way ‘How come that she met him before she met me? Why’s the person that you feel strongly attracted to with somebody else? Marriage or not’.
‘It never crossed my mind that it could be anything else. It wasn’t like I was trying to pinch someone else’s wife – there was no question of that.
‘And then about a year later, our paths crossed and her husband was away for about four months on a field trip. He was a botanist.
But when Sarah’s then husband went away for work, she and Monty fell for each other and she eventually decided to finish with her husband
‘And we started to bump into each other a bit more and we discovered that we really, really liked spending time together but in a completely platonic innocent way.
‘And gradually over sort of days, and weeks, I was aware that the platonic side of things I was regretting more and more.
‘You know that thing when you’re very attracted to somebody you don’t go too close to them, or you don’t dare show too much interest or whatever.
‘It turned out that we both felt the same way. But she was married to someone else and so it was very difficult.
‘She decided that she absolutely didn’t want to sort of have an affair.
‘She chose me and it was for about six months an extremely difficult, unhappy tormented set up because he obviously was not very happy with that arrangement.
‘He completely reasonably felt betrayed and very, very, very angry.
‘So I don’t want sort of belittle any of that, but at the same time we both just felt that we had our life partner. We had just met the person that we were meant to be with and it was a terrible pity that she had got married.
‘She got married at 19, five years before I met her. And it was complicated because her husband only asked her to marry him because he was doing postgraduate work in Papua New Guinea and was going to be away for three years, and they had been boyfriend and girlfriend, and so it was a way of being together. In those days there was no question of her going with him unmarried.
‘I’m not in any way trying to belittle their marriage. As far as I can gather it was very happy.
‘But the point was we hadn’t met and we met. And I just felt at first incredibly frustrated and sad that the person that I wanted to be with I couldn’t be with, and then incredibly blessed that I could be.
‘I remember bicycling across the Yorkshire Moors. And there was a gamekeeper in his cottage and he says ‘They’res living up at the bank, are they?’ And I said ‘I am’, (he said) ‘with your girl?’, and I said ‘yes, yes, she’s my girl’ and thinking that’s the best thing I’ve ever felt.
‘That’s really been it ever since.
Monty admitted that despite his guilt he had to be ruthless, saying: ‘I thought it was great, it was wonderful. I’m so glad’
‘The point is I’ve always felt a bit guilty about it, but at the same time there is a kind of ruthlessness. All is fair in love and war. You can’t pussyfoot about. If you decide to be with someone and it means breaking up their marriage, you can’t then say ‘Oh I feel really bad about this’.
‘No I don’t. I thought it was great, it was wonderful. I’m so glad.
‘I feel sorry for him, but it happened and I’m really glad it happened. I have no regrets at all.’
Speaking about Sarah’s decision to marry her first husband because of his desire to go abroad, Monty added on the White Wine Question Time podcast: ‘It would have been very difficult for her to go and not be married, and also it was a way of getting away from home. If you wanted to leave home and see the wider world, by getting married, it authorised it all.
‘I think now anybody who marries before they’re 25 is considered very young.
‘We’ve been together for 44 years, we’ve been married for 40 of them, and the only reason we didn’t get married earlier is because it took two years for her divorce to get sorted out.
‘I would have married on day one. And then we were in Scotland in the Hebrides, and we were on some remote islands, and I rode her out to sea, and the sea was quite calm, and I said ‘Will you marry me?’ And she said ‘I’m not sure’. And I said ‘Well I’m not rowing back until you do’.
‘So we sat in the boat and after about a minute or two she said ‘Oh, ok, alright’.
‘And then when we got back to London, a couple of days later, I’d booked the registry office for later that week, because I thought ‘I don’t want her to change her mind’.
‘So I then told her we were getting married I think 48 hours before we were due because she’d agreed but we hadn’t set a date.
‘Then we had to get a ring, and I remember ringing a few people to say ‘come along’. My brother rang me and he said ‘Do you want to have lunch?’
‘I said ‘yeah, great, tell you what you come to lunch with me, and I’ll pay for it, but can you come to my wedding first’.
He proposed on a rowing boat in Scotland, refusing to row back to land until Sarah changed her mind after she at first said she wasn’t sure
‘So come to my wedding and then we’ll have lunch. And then in the morning we both went into work, we had work to do.
‘We got married in Finsbury Registry Office and then had this lunch in L’Escargot and that was it, we never had a honeymoon.’
He added that despite their closeness, there have been rocky times in his marriage to jeweller Sarah, 69, because of financial problems after their joint jewelry business collapsed, and Monty’s depression.
Monty said: ‘Everyone changes, it’s never a bed of roses. Living with someone else is always going to be demanding at lots of levels.
‘We lost everything. There was one point when Sarah said ‘Look I just can’t take any longer your moods and your black depression, you’ve got to do something about it, because if you don’t I can’t live with you, and I’ll take the children and I’ll go.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to live with you, it’s not that I don’t love you, but I just cannot cope with you’ and the fact that we were in this rented horrible house, we had no money, I had no work, she had three little children.
‘And I did go and see a doctor.’
