It’s a narrative we’ve seen play out in plenty of romcoms – boy meets girl, pair become best friends, support each other through other relationships before falling (or realising they have always been) in love with each other.
For Zoe Foster Blake and Hamish Blake, this is more or less the reality – and fortunately for us they’ve spilled the details on their ‘how we met’ story.
The pair met in 2004 when she was 23 years old and radio host Blake was 21 years old at an event that doesn’t sound quite as glamourous as we’d expected: it was a “horrible men’s deodorant launch thing.”
And while they’re adorably loved up now, it wasn’t love at first sight.
In fact, in an interview with Fairfax Media’s Good Weekend, Foster Blake revealed that she actually felt no physical attraction towards Blake at all. (“No offence, honey” she said to him after.)
Want to know how Zoe Foster Blake does it? We asked her just that.
However the pair quickly established a lasting friendship for years while both dated other people, during which they wrote a dating book Textbook Romance together which was published in 2009.
“I had never met anyone like her – confident, hilarious, obviously beautiful and very full of fun and life. I’ve come to know it as the Zoë magic,” Blake told the magazine.
When they were both single in 2010, their relationship began to change.
“We had a few conversations and it slowly unravelled,” Foster Blake said.
They were married in December 2012 and had their son Sonny in May two years later.
Foster Blake has previously spoken about the moment she realised she wanted Blake to be more than a friend.
“It was quite a startling moment because he’d always just been firmly a friend, even brother like, to the point that when people were like ‘I think you and Hamish would be good together’ I’d be like [vomit sound],” she told Show and Tell in 2013.
“You know, we’d both had partners, and I’d been single for a year, out of a relationship for a few months, and it was quite organic I think.”
Looking back at their nearly decade-long relationship, they both credit friendship for giving their marriage its strong foundation, even when dealing with the demands of two young children while juggling high-profile careers, sharing the secrets of their loved-up marriage on Channel 9’s 60 Minutes.
“When you’ve got kids and you’re sleep deprived, you’re falling back on your friendship far more than you’re falling back on….” began Blake, before the beauty guru completed his sentence with “….sexy times”.
And it’s clearly a winning strategy.
“Hamish is a fantastic partner,” she continued.
“And I often say when girls are chronically single, I’m like, ‘Do you have any like, male friends that you’ve never thought about romantically? Because I do recommend falling in love with your really good friend’.”
Are you as in love with Zoe Foster Blake and Hamish Blake as we are? Share the feels in a comment below.