Rachel Riley compares herself and her husband Pasha Kovalev to ‘ships that pass in the night’.
The Countdown singer, 37, confessed that it sometimes be tough for her and Pasha, 43, to spend time alone since they are so busy with their work and their children, Maven, two, and Noa, 20 months, but she emphasised that they are both prepared to make compromises where necessary.
She revealed: ‘We have a rare date night because he’s going to be away for quite a long time.
‘But when you first get together, if they’re away for three months and you’ve only been together a month, it’s a big deal.
‘But when you’ve been together the best part of a decade and you can see a future of how ever many more decades that you get together, it kind of changes your perspective.’
She continued to The Sun: ‘It’s been busy, it’s been different, but everything is always in flux.
‘It would be nice, once I’m not feeding the baby and picking her up, maybe we could even have a night together but that feels like a million miles away at the moment.’
Since the couple’s children were born, date nights have become increasingly uncommon, but Rachel is content to forego a few evenings out in order to spend time with them.
She explained: ‘We’re enjoying this phase of having little ones but then we know it’s not going to be forever.
‘When the kids get old and move out, you’ve still got each other and we value that and we look forward to that when we can get back to that but also we don’t feel time constrained.’
Rachel and professional dancer Pasha met on Strictly Come Dancing in 2013 when they were paired together, and they married in Las Vegas in 2019 before the birth of their first child, Maven.
The couple delivered baby girl Noa in 2021, but earlier this year acknowledged that all romantic encounters were on pause.
‘All the romance and dates… we just kind of put a pin in it,’ she said.
‘We’re both quite patient and we know that once Noa is off the boob, we’ll get there again,’ she added to the Mirror.
Despite meeting on the BBC programme, Rachel previously talked out about her Strictly ‘curse’ experience.
In an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine last year, the TV personality voiced her sentiments regarding the notion that celebrities fall in love with their professional partners, stating that it was not the appropriate phrase for her experience.
Rachel teased: ‘Are you calling my babies a curse? That’s not right!’
‘If you have cracks, Strictly can expose them. It gave me the distance to make the break that was going to happen anyway.’