For many viewers, breakfast TV is a refuge thanks to its cosy conventionality, lightweight topics, and the presenting duos who come to feel like family. But the cheery legacy of ITV’s flagship show This Morning has taken a serious hit: first with the scandal that led to the departure of Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby in 2023, then with the news today that Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford, who presented the show for 15 years until their departure in 2021, are set to divorce – with the pressures of This Morning allegedly a factor.
A spokesperson for the couple said that Holmes and Langsford, both 64, “have confirmed their marriage is over and they are in the process of divorcing.” Neither of them has yet commented individually.
However, a source told The Sun that Holmes will share his side of the story on his GB News breakfast show on Monday. “Eamonn is always frank on camera and knows it will be odd for him to discuss the day’s news without mentioning the split, so he’ll say a few words. He’s putting on a brave face.”
As for that joint statement, it was apparently at Langsford’s behest. Holmes hadn’t wanted to go public yet, but she decided it was time to officially confirm their split. Holmes allegedly said: “Ruth can do what she wants, but keep me out of it.” Another source suggested Holmes knew deep down the marriage was over, but has been “sticking his head in the sand”.
Friends of the couple say that their separation actually happened a year ago, and they have been “determined to keep it a secret”. Holmes has now reportedly moved out of their £3.2 million six-bedroom mansion in the town of Weybridge, Surrey, and is living in another property nearby.
It’s a sad end for morning TV’s golden couple – although, ironically, it was partly the strain of maintaining their picture-perfect image which led to this separation after 14 years of marriage.
Langsford had previously revealed that Holmes first spotted her on TV. “He was at home on a Sunday morning watching Countryfile, and I was doing a piece to camera on a boat,” she told her fellow presenters on ITV’s Loose Women in 2021. “As he knows now, I get terribly seasick, but I needed the money. When I met him, a couple of years later, he went: ‘Were you on the back of a boat in a red jacket?’”.
This meeting took place in London in 1997, soon after Holmes’s split from first wife Gabrielle. Mindful of Holmes’s three children (Declan, Rebecca and Niall), Langsford recalled they kept their burgeoning romance a secret. “I thought it spoke volumes about the sort of father he was and the integrity he had,” she explained. “It made me love him more, not less.”
She even compared them to a Hollywood glamour couple, saying: “Our relationship is very passionate. We’re like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Although we bicker and argue, ultimately our love for each other and the bond we share is so strong.”
The couple had a son, Jack, in 2002, and finally married at Elvetham Hall in Hampshire, in 2010.
Over the years, they also established a successful working relationship, co-presenting shows like teatime quiz Gift Wrapped, Channel 5’s How the Other Half Lives and, of course, This Morning. Langsford became a regular presenter of the latter in 2006, after a popular guest stint, and Holmes joined her later that year.