He’s known for his tough, no-nonsense persona on SAS Australia, but at home in England, Ant Middleton is a loving husband to his wife Emilie.
Ant met his now-wife Emilie in June 2004 when she was working at a bar in Essex, and the rest, as they say, is history.
“It was love at first sight. He was so cheeky and funny, as well as good-looking and muscular, and I knew he was The One,” Emilie told The Sun in 2019.
“At that time, Ant was on a career break. He’d served in the army since the age of 16, deployed in Northern Ireland and Macedonia. But he soon told me that civilian life wasn’t working for him – he missed the military and wanted to join the Royal Marines.
“Of course, I was worried that he might be injured or even killed, but I also knew that he needed to do what made him happy.”
The couple, who were both in their 20s at the time, then spent big chunks of time apart while Ant went on tour in Afghanistan and other war zones around the world.
“Despite being apart for months at a time, our relationship only grew stronger,” Emilie said.
In fact, the time apart led the couple to realise they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with each other, and they tied the knot in Antigua in May 2006.
Ant and Emilie welcomed their first child, a daughter named Shyla, in September 2007, and their son Gabriel in March 2009.
“Ant was brilliant with the kids when he came home on his breaks in between tours. When he was away, we kept in contact as much as we could. Ant had a phone card that he could use out there, but he didn’t have a mobile, so I had to wait for him to call every Sunday night,” Emilie said.
The couple then welcomed their daughter Priseis in September 2015, around the same time Ant debuted on British TV screens on SAS: Who Dares Wins.
The following year, Emilie gave birth to their fourth child, a son named Bligh.
“The kids are so proud of their dad. Gabriel says that one day he wants to be an adventurer, too,” Emilie said.
The mother-of-four admitted that as Ant’s star began to rise, so too, did his number of flirty messages from his female admirers.
“I’ve had a few emails from women telling me that I should look after him because there’s a queue around the block for him, but I know Ant is a committed family man,” she said.
“Then almost overnight we went from an existence where nobody knew anything about my husband and how he was spending his time, to realising that millions of people thought they knew everything about him,” she later wrote in Ant’s book Zero Negativity.
“I’d meet people on the street and they would talk to me like they knew him. For a year, maybe more, I struggled to adjust to it.”
While the Dancing With The Stars star rarely posts photos of Emilie to his 1.3 million Instagram followers, he did share a sweet tribute to his wife on Valentine’s Day 2019.
“The loves of my life that make me the man I am today! Especially my beautiful wife @emiliemiddleton03 😘 Happy Valentines my angels 💙❤️💗💙💓💙 #trulyblessed #mylife,” he captioned a family photo.
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