Andrea McLean, star of Loose Women, was moved to tears during an emotional conversation with her daughter Amy about the end of her second marriage.
The popular television host opened up on the Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast, hosted by Giovanna Fletcher, sharing her intimate experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and raising children.
In a heartfelt discussion with Giovanna, Andrea spoke candidly about discussing her separation from husbands with her children Finlay and Amy.
She initially married BBC producer Nick Green, with whom she has her son Finlay, before entering a union with Steve Toms, co-presenter of Our House, and welcoming their daughter Amy in November 2006.
Celebrity couple Andrea and Steve took their vows in an idyllic summer wedding in August 2009, conveniently coinciding with the Loose Women summer hiatus. Yet, the relationship unraveled, and in January 2012, Andrea revealed to stunned fans that she and Steve had separated after a year-long attempt to mend their marriage.
On Giovanna’s podcast, Andrea said: “I commuted to Loose Women and never told anyone that I was now living at mum and dad’s. And then I came back down to Surrey and I told [the kids] that [Steve] had gone away with work.”
She went on to explain the gentle way she eased her children into the idea of Steve no longer living at home, emphasizing: “Then I just introduced slowly the idea that he wasn’t going to be living with us any more. So we’re going to have a new house and we’re going to move somewhere else. But he’s very close by and you are loved and you are safe.”
Andrea was well past her second divorce when a profoundly emotional conversation with her teen daughter Amy brought tears to her eyes.
Looking back, she shared: “Years later, many years later, Amy was a teenager. She mentioned something and I realised that the time was now to tell her a fuller version of events.”
She went on to reveal: “So I told her the fuller version and she said to me something that… oh my gosh it choked me up at the time and still chokes me. She said ‘oh my goodness mummy. You were like Mrs Incredible. You stretched over the top of the two of us. And it’s like we were sitting on the floor playing and we didn’t even notice the bullets were bouncing off you. And you just kept us safe’.”
Reflecting on the resilience she portrayed, Andrea recalled: “And I said ‘yep, that’s what I was trying to do until you’re ready to know and understand. And now you do. I’m here for you. But now I’m walking alongside you’.”
Through the trials of her dissolutions, Andrea maintained it was critical to shield how her personal narrative impacted her kids perception of their fathers.
Highlighting responsible parenting, Andrea insisted: “I felt it was very important for me with both of my children that whatever the situation is that happened between me and your dad is between me and your dad. Your relationship is your relationship with you and your dad. And I have no right to try and poison that or discolour that.”
In 2017, Andrea tied the knot with business mogul Nick Feeney. The match was made courtesy of Donna May Clitheroe, the famed Loose Women makeup artist, who organised a blind date for them.
