Twenty-five years after they said ‘I do’, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has revealed the secret to his long-lasting marriage to wife Jools.
“I wouldn’t be the first to say opposites attract,” Oliver said in a new interview with the UK’s Good Housekeeping that comes after they celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.
“We get on very well and we genuinely like each other, but we’re also very different.
“That can create a certain tension, but it also seems to work, and I feel very blessed to have had 25 years.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Oliver said while their marriage might look easy from the outside, he and Jools were “just wrestling through like anyone else” and gave his secret to making a marriage work.
“[It’s important] not to hold grudges, and to try to communicate as much as possible,” he said.
“Sometimes it doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong and, ultimately, I just want Jools to be happy.”
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Jools, whose real name is Juliette Norton, and Oliver first met when they were in their teens when they were both students at Westminster Technical College, where he was studying catering.
Oliver developed a crush on Jools after he saw her in class but it took about a year before he worked up the courage to ask her out on a double date to the movies once they had turned 17, but it did not go as planned.
“We were driving there that night and then I went smashing into the back of another car,” he said on Alan Carr: Chatty Man.
Their fledgling relationship was also tested early on when Jools, then a model, went to Japan for three months for work.
After she returned, they became inseparable, renting a small flat together while Oliver worked in the kitchen at the famed River Cafe, London.
It was during his tenure there that he was called in to work on his day off as a TV documentary was being filmed.
During a 2023 appearance on MasterChef Australia, he revealed he almost didn’t go into work that day after Jools asked him to stay home and spend the day with her as planned.
But he did, and his role in the documentary resulted in the offer of his own TV show, The Naked Chef.
They married in 2000, just one year after the show aired, with their wedding photos ending up on magazine covers.
As Oliver’s star grew, Jools was happy to stay largely out of the spotlight.
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While he courted fame and celebrity, she stayed home and looked after their growing brood, which includes five children who now range in age from 23 to nine; Poppy Honey Rosie, Daisy Boo Pamela, Petal Blossom Rainbow, Buddy Bear Maurice and River Rocket.
They have since renewed their marriage vows twice, in 2023 and 2024, first in the Maldives and then in Las Vegas.
This year he marked their 25th wedding anniversary with a gushing post on Instagram.
As always, they will celebrate Christmas together at their farmhouse estate in Essex, England, where they will no doubt argue over, of all things, stuffing.
“You love stuffing,” Oliver joked to Jools during the Good Housekeeping interview, as she replied, saying she “can’t stand stuffing because I hate onions”.
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“I said I never put onions in it! I only use the white part of the leeks. I told you that yesterday,” he said.
They will all wake up at 5am for River, before feasting on Oliver’s lovingly prepared feast – stuffing included.
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