Couple remarry 28 years after their first wedding – story in the DAILY MAIL
I fell in love with my ex husband ! Duncan and Annette were reunited by their son …
Duncan and Annette on their honeymoon!
They were the words of a son who longed to see his parents reunite.
But even Stuart Gray, 34, couldn’t imagine asking his long-lost father if he’d ever thought about ‘getting back with mum’ would result in them remarrying.
Yet after 28 years after they first wed his parents Annette Wensley, 54, and Duncan Gray, 57 said ‘I do’ again – with proud Stuart as best man.
His mother was just 17 and his father 20 when they met at Brands Hatch racing circuit in 1979.
‘ ‘Being back with Duncan is as if we’ve never been apart,’ says the new Mrs Annette Gray, ‘If it weren’t for Stuart we’d never have found love again. But now we have we’re making up for all the decades we spent apart.’
The couple first met when her husband was an up and coming racing driver.
She says: ‘I’d gone to Brands Hatch with some friends and Duncan came over for a chat. He had a gorgeous smile that made my heart pound. Within weeks we were a couple and when four months after we married I found I was expecting Stuart, we were thrilled.’
As her his racing career took off the couple travelled together with baby Stuart.
‘But when Stuart started school I had to stay at home and we drifted apart,’ recalls Mrs Gray, ‘eventually we were living separate lives.’
Over the next 20 years both of them began relationships with others, losing contact.
That was until 2009. She recalls: ‘One evening Stuart said, ‘Mum do you ever think of dad?
‘It came out of the blue. But although I had a new man in my life I agreed to help Stuart find Duncan.’
After ringing old friends they found Mr Gray, who’d moved 200 miles away from Chatham, Kent, to South Yorkshire.
She recalls: ‘I stayed in the car while Stuart knocked on Duncan’s front door. A few hours later he came back and said it had been great to see his father again but that he was recovering from bowel cancer. That was a terrible shock.’
Three months later she got a surprise email from her former husband.
‘I said to Stuart I didn’t realise you’d given dad my email – it was then he confessed he’d asked Duncan if he’d ever thought about getting back with me.’
From then on the couple regularly chatted online. Years passed but as they were both in new relationships they never met.
However, when both of them became single again they began to lean on one another more.
‘I often found myself messaging Duncan,’ says Mrs Gray, ‘sometimes we’d be chatting online for over an hour.’
Still, they never met – until September 2016 when she suddenly received a shocking phone call.
‘It was Duncan. He’d been rushed to hospital with internal bleeding. As he was rushed into life threatening surgery he just managed to say there was something he needed to tell me…’
She adds: ‘It was heartbreaking when he said he’d never stopped loving me all these past 28 years. In that moment I knew I felt the same. It was terrible as he was about to undergo emergency surgery. It was such and go and I wondered if it would be too late.’
Thankfully he made it through and she rushed to his side.
‘My heart was pounding as we hadn’t seen one another in 28 years. But as soon as I set eyes on Duncan all the old feelings flooded back.’
Mr Gray, 58, a motorsport instructor, says: ‘We fell into one another’s arms. I was back with my soulmate.’
The couple couldn’t wait to tell their son, who had seven children who’d never met their granddad.
He says: ‘I’d longed for this day. It was incredibly emotional.’
Three weeks later the couple moved in together and Mr Gray proposed. Last week (July 8th 2017) they wed again at Brands Hatch racing car circuit where they met.
Says Mrs Gray: ‘It was a wonderful day. Naturally our best man was Stuart. After all without him Duncan and I would never have found love again. He is so thrilled to have his parents back together. We are a complete family again.’
The couple’s story has already appeared via Featureworld in Take a Break magazine! And they will shortly be appearing in yet another big weekly mag!
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