When Jake Carter signed up for the second series of Dancing With The Stars, he did so slightly blindly. By his own admission, the singer had seen only a couple of episodes of the hit RTÉ series, so his expectations of success were not high.
Instead, after being paired with professional dancer Karen Byrne, he ended up lifting the glitterball trophy. Then when the sequinned shirts went back to the wardrobe department, the last remnants of the weekly spray tans were scrubbed away and the hoopla died down, a realisation hit him. He missed her.
Weeks later, plucking up all his courage, he asked Karen out to a concert. Soon, they had moved in together. They got a dog, Lenny, and, finally, his proposal was the ultimate maximum score.
Jake's romantic proposal
Viewers were delighted when, tricked into rehearsing a segment on the show, Karen was surprised as Jake and Lenny arrived on the show set in Font Hill Studios in west Dublin.
'Hello, missus. Seven years ago, we met on this dancefloor, and both of our lives changed forever,' he began. 'So I thought it was the perfect place to come back and ask you, will you marry me?'
Karen looked on in shock. 'Well, say something!' he continued. 'Are you actually for real, Jake?' Karen asked, to which he replied, 'Is it a yes?' 'Yeah, oh my God,' Karen finally said, as she started crying and hugging him tightly.
Later, she explained how she was set up by the show's background team. 'They basically said to me yesterday, "Oh, we're gonna do a thing where you're handing back the trophy [she won it a second time last year, dancing with Paralympian Jason Smyth] and we're gonna film it", and whatever.
‘So I'm on set with the trophy, walking down to place it down on this stand," she told the show's social media presenter James Patrice. 'Then Jake gets down on one knee and they start playing our whole journey in the background. I nearly died. I was in pure and utter shock.'
That said, there is no ring yet, which Karen explained - with typically blunt honesty - is because 'I have fat knuckles'.
Meeting on the show
When Jake and Karen were in the show, she was single again after another relationship, so the timing in life was as good as that in the four routines that saw them earn the, at the time, maximum 30 points for four of their dances.
By October 2018, their relationship was public.
Age gap romance
If Jake was 32, and Karen 26, no one would even notice, but since the ages are the other way round, Jake has long laughed off the 'toyboy' label. 'Age is just a number,' he said when the question was first asked. 'I'm about 40 in my head, I grew up thinking I was 18 from when I was about 13. There's only six years between us.'
As the younger brother of country music superstar Nathan Carter, eight years his senior, Jake was used to flying by himself, from the age of 13, between the family home in Liverpool and Nathan's home in Enniskillen.
'I feel like I'm the same age as Nathan,' he said. 'I was trying to get into pubs and say I was 18, doing stuff I shouldn't have been doing. It made me grow up from such a young age. It's been a big help to me - my own doing, I might add - I had to mature quickly. By the time I'm 30, they'll be well fed up of me and be like, "this fella has been around for years".'
Living together
The couple soon settled into cosy domesticity in Lucan, except for a time during the pandemic when they lived with Nathan, and the three often shared photos of Christmas dinners, and boating trips on Lough Erne.
'Touch wood, we've never had an argument anyway,' Karen has said. 'He lets me be the one that goes off, and he's just too nice.'
Jake pulls his weight around the house too, with Karen telling the RTÉ Guide: 'Jake is very domesticated now. I think he did all the housework when he was living with Nathan. I did have to teach him how to cook, but he does all the washing and cleaning with us.'
Business partners
Karen and Jake are also professional partners in the Jake and Karen Stage School, which helps ‘students to develop self-confidence, self-expression, and skills in creativity through the art of dancing, singing and acting,
'Some kids don't love school and that's OK,' Karen told the RTÉ Guide. 'This is like their little escape and it's so good for them.'
Romantic Jake
Though he likes to be supportive during DWTS filming, buying Karen a bag of Haribo jellies, a bottle of Coke and a bunch of flowers every week, Jake doesn't attend all the live broadcasts because it often clashes with football matches on television - 'he's sick of it!' Karen said - but he meets up with all the cast and crew afterwards.
He's romantic too, releasing a track called Loved Me Like You Do on Valentine's Day last year, though he couldn't resist engaging in a bit of Scouse divilment. 'I tell everyone it's about Lenny,' he said, 'but I did tell her on Valentine's Day that it's about her.'
Shared sense of humour
The couple has gained lots of fans on social media with jokey video clips about the difference in the way they pronounce words, Jake with his Scouse accent and Karen with her Ballyfermot one.
'The word videos are always just lighthearted fun,' she told me last year, 'but secretly I love when people agree with me and not him. Our accents are so strong, it's a constant slagging match in our house.'
Karen has also been a huge hit with audiences in her new Dancing With The Stars role because just as she did when dancing, she's always honest - and even puts her foot in it sometimes too.
When commenting on a dance by former Eurovision singer Mickey Harte, she had the studio and home audiences in stitches when she told him 'that was a bit stiff, Mickey'. Jake immediately clipped it and shared his own faked wide-eyed reaction on Instagram.
As he has said in the past, 'with Karen, what you get is what it says on the tin. That's what people love when they watch her, and that's what I love too. People like her as she's the same on-screen and off-screen.'
