IT WAS A REALITY TELEVISION ROMANCE THAT NO ONE EXPECTED TO LAST ONCE THEY LEFT THE HOUSE.
He played the laid-back, amiable Scouser in the Big Brother house, while she played the villainous performing arts student who was voted out after only four weeks.
Grace Adams-Short and Mikey Dalton have shown they were the genuine thing all along after 16 years and four children.
Grace, 36, confesses they are more in love than ever after the arrival of their newest addition, 14-week-old Atticus.
“We still bounce off one other as we did from day one,” she adds. We obviously drive each other insane at times, just like any other marriage, but we’re best friends, and now that we have children, our bond is much stronger.
“Seeing what a great father Mikey is has made him even more appealing to me.”
Mikey, a 38-year-old property entrepreneur, says that he still has a crush on Grace.
“Grace only gets better with age,” he continues, despite the fact that she hasn’t aged at all. Every day, I tell her how beautiful she is.”
Along with Atticus, the couple has three other children: Georgiana, ten, Spencer, six, and Allegra, three, and life in their Liverpool house is chaotic.
In fact, Grace describes herself and Mikey as “passing ships in the night.” Mikey, on the other hand, has some ideas about why their friendship has withstood the test of time.
“We don’t frequently have time for each other,” he explains. I leave for work quite early and return home to spend a couple of hours with the kids before bath time and bedtime.
“But, in the end, we both know that we want the same things out of life and for our children.”
“You don’t have to agree on everything; marriage isn’t about having the same opinions all the time.” But as long as you’re all pulling in the same direction, you’ll be fine.”
Grace and Mikey entered the Big Brother house in the summer of 2006 for what would turn out to be the show’s famous seventh series.
Among the other roommates were eventual winner Pete Bennett, Imogen Thomas, and the late Nikki Grahame.
Grace can see why she and Mikey seemed like an improbable match at first. “It was obviously the north/south split that made us extremely distinct,” she recalls.
“I mean, I’d never been to Liverpool and didn’t even know where it was.” ‘Is it in Scotland?’ I wondered.
“However, a week at that house felt like a month.” We went through the honeymoon stage, and the ups and downs were all accelerated in that pressure cooker.
“As a result, we got to know each other pretty fast.”
Grace was evicted on day 30 after being nominated by new girl Susie Verrico, who was the only one able to vote that week, besides Nikki.She won with 87.9% of the vote and tossed a glass of water at Susie as she left the home. Grace recounts her horror at realising she had become the show’s hate figure after hearing the booing and chanting from the audience outside, despite the fact that she now describes it as “panto.”
Following that, she received advise from season one’s “Nasty” Nick Bateman and played a cunning game on the outside, exploiting her reputation for being “bitchy.”
“I remember seeing the stack of newspapers when I got out and it was like “Big Brother bitch,” she recounts, adding, “and I was like, ‘What the hell?'”
“However, I chatted with Nasty Nick, who assured me it was all in good fun and that I should simply enjoy myself, which I did in the end.” Every year, I got to play the villain in a pantomime.”
Back in the noughties, Big Brother was appointment television, averaging eight million people each episode, and Grace and Mikey were thrust into a world of magazine agreements and rich prospects.
They got engaged four months after the show and enjoyed a two-and-a-half-year long-distance affair before being married in 2009 and settling down in Liverpool.
“I adore being up here,” adds Grace, who is originally from Plymouth. We live in a fairly good neighbourhood, the kids go to a terrific school, and everyone is happy.
“Our lives are no longer the same. We’re so preoccupied with the kids that we were relieved to walk away from the spotlight.”
Mikey now works in property development, while Grace has sold her performing arts institution to focus solely on raising her children. And, despite the fact that Big Brother ended 16 years ago, the duo is still recognised.
“People ask, ‘Where did I know you from?'” Grace adds. They recognise us but mistakenly believe they know us from university. Alternatively, they will ask, ‘Did you go out with such and so?’
“I never know what to answer because I think saying, ‘I was on Big Brother, actually,’ seems a little w***y.” But there was one occasion Georgiana declared, ‘She’s from Big Brother,’ because she was sick of everybody speculating.”
Mikey claims that he is frequently asked how they fared financially after Big Brother.
“People usually want to know how much money we earned,” he continues, “but my reaction is always the same.”
“I’ve got a wife and kids, and they aren’t things you can purchase.”
