Sarah Beeny shed light on her troubled marriage to husband Graham Swift years before announcing they are ‘hanging on by their fingernails’ to salvage their union.
Following her recent breast cancer battle, the TV star, 51, who was given the all clear in April 2023, spoke on The Mid.Point podcast with Gabby Logan podcast, saying: ‘We’re hanging on in there by our fingernails. I mean, it’s not easy, is it?’
She admitted the couple, who married in 2002 after meeting on a blind date when Sarah was just 18, are staying together for the sake of their four children, sons Billy, 18, Charlie, 16, Rafferty, 14, and Laurie, 12.
Back in 2014, Sarah made the eye-opening revelation that the couple have never said ‘I love you’, explaining: ‘I’ve never told my husband I loved him because he’d just tease me and he said them to me either’ – before regaling the comments in 2021.
Further explosive insights have included the admission that the couple bicker constantly, Graham’s strange takes on romance – including an offering of his dirty pants – and the rough patches they are forced to weather.
Tough times: Sarah Beeny shed extensive light on troubled sides of her marriage to husband Graham Swift, years before announcing they are ‘hanging on by their fingernails’
No love… kind of: Back in 2014, Sarah made the eye-opening revelation that the couple have never said I love you, saying: ‘I’ve never told my husband I loved him because he’d just tease me and he said them to me either’ – before regaling the comments in 2021 (pictured in 2018)
In her new podcast appearance, Sarah confessed: ‘Graham always said, ‘The day we have to work at our marriage, I’m going to leave’. And I was like, ‘Really?’ But I think he has had to work at it to be honest…
‘I was being particularly horrible, because I have been a bit horrible in the last couple of years to be honest at times…
‘I was being particularly horrible and he said, ‘you know the thing is Sarah, you’re not prepared to leave and have your children half the time, and neither am I, so we’re going to stay together.
‘And we’re going to stay together happily or unhappily, so which would you like it to be?’ And I was like, oh that is quite dark, isn’t it?’
Following her shock reveal, quotes have resurfaced showing her intriguing insights into their relationship, including her 2014 words to Daily Express.
She said: ‘ I’ve never told my husband I loved him because he’d just tease me and he said them to me either. It’s just a word and I don’t think my relationship with my husband is like anyone else’s so I wouldn’t want to use the same word that everyone uses…
‘I don’t like the word ‘love’ because it has all sorts of connotations of what Hallmark cards say you should do and I don’t think love is predictable…
‘It doesn’t necessarily happen on the 14th of February and it doesn’t come from a card shop and have sparkly red hearts on it – it’s just making somebody know that you care about them.’
Do it for the kids: She admitted the couple, who married in 2002 after meeting on a blind date when Sarah was just 18, are staying together for the sake of their four children, sons Billy, 18, Charlie, 16, Rafferty, 14, and Laurie, 12
In 2021, she confessed to The Sun that the duo suffer their rough patches, saying: ‘I’m not going to say it’s easy all the time, but I’m really lucky. I’m married to my best friend and you take the rough with the smooth.
‘We’ve gone through ups and downs, and times when we adore each other more, and other times when we adore each other a bit less.
‘I’m married to someone who is really good-looking, really talented, makes me laugh and is loyal. I don’t know what else you could want in a husband.’
The couple appear together on Sarah Beeny’s New Life In The Country, which documents their transformation of a derelict former dairy farm in Bruton, Somerset – however she admits they cover up some of their more explosive rows.
She said: ‘I’d love to say it’s all perfect like the Waltons. Everyone behaves better when we’re filming, though. You can’t argue on telly as much as you do in real life…
Graham and I bicker about stupid things. But there are two types of relationships — you either have one where you don’t bicker, or one where you do, and you have to make up. How can you make up if you haven’t had a fight?’
On his rather unique take on romance, Sarah said: ‘I once said to him, ‘Some people get flowers or underwear all the time. It wouldn’t be out of the question for you to do that’. ‘He took off his dirty pants and handed them to me and said, ‘There’s some underwear for you’.’
Sarah and Graham met under unusual circumstances, as her brother Diccon, 51, and his sister Caroline, 52, are married and even introduced the TV star and artist.
On their siblings’ marriage and her introduction to Graham, she said: ‘They’ve got four kids and they are best friends with our four kids. They met first, about a week before us, and then my brother said, ‘Oh, I’ve got a new girlfriend and you’d really like her brother’.
Fair: Also in the podcast chat Sarah revealed that she didn’t even want to mention her breast cancer battle in her new book
‘I said, ‘Don’t be pathetic, I’m obviously not going to go out with your new girlfriend’s brother’, and then I was like, ‘Oh, all right, I might’. When they got married, it was really weird. I was a bridesmaid and Graham was an usher, and the night before the wedding we were like,
‘Tomorrow, we’re going to be we’re going to be kind of brother and sister’.’
She admitted their whirlwind relationship concerned thair families, saying: ‘We were really young — he was 18 and I was 19. We moved in two weeks later and we bought a flat together about three months later.
‘I look at 18-year-olds now and think, ‘God, if they came home and said they were buying a flat together, I would be horrified’.
‘I don’t blame them for feeling that, but it does make me take young people’s relationships more seriously than other people might.’
In her new interview about the tenuous state of their romance, she revealed she had once again turned to her brother for support.
She said: ‘I rang my brother … and said, ‘right that’s it, Graham’s being so annoying, I think we’re going to split up,’ and he listened to me for ages, yeah, yeah, yeah, he said, ‘I get it Sarah, it must be horrendous being married to him.
‘The only thing I think that could be worse is being married to you.’ So I suggest you go and make up! So all is well.’
Also in the podcast chat Sarah revealed that she didn’t even want to mention her breast cancer battle in her new book.
Happy days: Sarah and Graham met under unusual circumstances, as her brother Diccon, 51, and his sister Caroline, 52, are married and even introduced the TV star and artist
She released her memoir The Simple Life: How I Found Home this year but has now told how she wanted to omit her health issues as she was reluctant for her cancer to be the ‘defining thing in her life.
She said of the book: ‘It’s a funny journey and in some ways, it feels like I didn’t want it to be the defining thing in my life.
‘I didn’t want to be ‘Sarah Beeny had cancer’. I actually asked the publishers if I could not put it in and they said, ‘no, that’s not really going to work not putting it in’. I was like, ‘really? Are you sure we have to put in?’.’
She added of how she dealt with her diagnosis and battle: ‘My friends laugh about it, but they say that my coping mechanism is to pick up the carpet and sweep everything underneath and then pop it back down and then move on.
‘I’m not saying it’s how anyone else should be, it isn’t; I’m sure many people would say that’s terrible, and you should process it.
‘We all own our own edit, I always think that’s kind the interesting thing in a way about life; I’ve been lucky enough to live on the planet 51 years and I couldn’t tell you anything about my life without taking 51 years to tell you about it, so I have to edit it down.
Tough: Sarah revealed that her marriage to husband Graham Swift is ‘hanging on by fingernails’ after her breast cancer battle in a candid new interview
‘Then you choose what you want to edit in and edit out, and I kind of like to edit in the good bits.
‘I didn’t really think cancer was a good bit, so I thought I would prefer to edit out, so when I wrote the book, I intentionally kept it to one chapter which I thought that way, you could just not read that chapter if you didn’t want to.’
She also told how she had never imaged living past the age of 39 after her mother Ann died at that age from the same kind of cancer.
Sarah said: ‘When I got my diagnosis, it was something that I’d always imagined I would get in a way, and yet dreaded at the same time.
‘So, she died when she was 39, when I got to 40, I had a little tiny bit of a crisis because I was like, ‘well, what do I do now?’ It wasn’t like I thought I was going to die. I just couldn’t picture life past 39, so I got to 40 and was like, ‘God, this is really weird, now what do you do?’.’
It comes after recently Sarah revealed she’s undergone gene testing to determine her family’s risk of developing cancer, after her own battle with the disease.
Family unit: The star was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2022 and underwent gruelling chemotherapy, as well as a double mastectomy
The star was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2022 and underwent gruelling chemotherapy, as well as a double mastectomy.
But the star has been incredibly open about her journey and in a recent interview she discussed how she has now discovered she has a gene mutation which made her more likely to get the disease.
The results of the tests solidified Sarah’s decision to get a double mastectomy rather than a single as the gene meant she had a 50/50 chance of getting cancer again in the future in the breast that wasn’t already affected.
It also meant there is a 50/50 chance she will pass the gene on to her children, sons Billy, Charlie, Rafferty and Laurie.
Sarah discovered that while she was negative for BRCA1 and BRCA2, she tested positive for PALB2, which could have wider implications for her children and potential future grandchildren.
The Mid.Point with Gabby Logan is available to listen to on all podcast platforms.