‘They’re absolutely smitten’: Strictly star Jacqui Smith, 63, is engaged to politics professor after six-year romance

As a former Strictly star, Jacqui Smith is no stranger to sparkles and glitter.

But it is the gleaming diamond ring on the former home secretary’s wedding finger that has been earning her attention lately.

For the Daily Mail can reveal that Baroness Smith, 63, who is a government minister in the Department of Education, has got engaged to her politics professor partner after a six-year romance. 

The former Labour MP, who found love in her late fifties after the breakdown of her three-decade-long marriage, was seen at the despatch box of the House of Lords on Monday flashing the sparkling jewel.

The Skills Minister met her fiancé Professor Graham Timmins, who is affectionately known as Page Three Boy after the Mail on Sunday revealed the relationship in 2020, outside a yoga class. The loved-up pair plan to wed in August.

Her friend and former Good Morning Britain sparring partner Iain Dale discussed the upcoming nuptials on his podcast Where Politics Meets History.

Asked whose wedding he was attending in August, the LBC presenter said: ‘Jacqui Smith. She and Page Three Boy are getting married.’

‘She told me just after Christmas and I was really pleased for her, because Graham, which is Page Three Boy’s name, he’s a lovely, lovely guy.

‘They’re absolutely smitten and devoted to each other.’

The relationship was revealed during her 2020 stint on Strictly Come Dancing when she was Du Beke’s final dance partner before he moved to the judging panel.

The former Home Secretary ‘courted’ Professor Timmins, a highly acclaimed academic at the University of Birmingham, via Zoom after they met in her home town of Malvern, Worcestershire.

‘We crossed on the stairs and I thought, ‘He’s nice’,’ she said of the couple’s first encounter.

But the Covid lockdown meant much of their early relationship was conducted via video conferencing.

They discovered a shared hobby in exercise and are both members of their local running club.

After lockdown rules were relaxed, Professor Timmins, a divorced father of two adult daughters, was spotted at the home of Baroness Smith which she then shared with her two sons, James and Michael.

She announced she had split from her husband Richard Timney in January 2020 after 33 years of marriage.

Smith had originally turned to dating apps after she was left feeling ‘completely robbed’ by her unfaithful ex-husband.

The first female home secretary said the end of her political career was nothing compared to the devastation of losing her marriage, after her husband told her he wanted ‘something new’ in his life.

She said that the pair had tried marriage counselling to work things out before the pair called time on the relationship in 2018.

Asked on the How to be 60 podcast whether the end of her political career or marriage was worse, Baroness Smith said: ‘The marriage was.

‘I suppose it’s because I always knew my political career would come to an end – my seat was quite marginal – whereas I thought my marriage was going to last forever. I thought we were going to be next to each other’s death beds, that’s what my picture of our life was. I just took it for granted.

‘I thought that’s what happened, you got married to somebody and then you were with them. I’d been married over 30 years and I thought we’d grow old together.

‘I felt completely robbed by the fact he was unfaithful and then turned around and said ‘I feel I need something new for the next 30 years of my life’. That wasn’t how I had seen my life panning out at all, so that was a massive change for me. So I’ve had to rebuild what my 60s will be like.’

The politician left office in 2009 after the expenses scandal, when it was revealed that Mr Timney had claimed for two pornographic films. She lost her Redditch seat the following year.

Following the 2024 general election, the prime minister Keir Starmer appointed her Minister of State for Skills and she was given a life peerage.