Denise Welch and Lincoln Townley are the winners of BBC1's Unbreakable, which tested celebrity couples to the limit, and in their first interview they tell HELLO! the secret of their remarkable love story.
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"It is lovely to win a show called Unbreakable as we have never doubted the strength of our union," says Denise, whose wedding to Lincoln took place in Portugal nine years ago, and was covered exclusively by HELLO!.
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"We always knew we are unbreakable, although there were a lot of naysayers at the beginning of our relationship and understandably so when you consider where we were in our lives," admits 64-year-old Denise. She met Lincoln, now a successful artist, 11 years ago during a "boozy encounter at a club in the dead of night."
"We had a very nocturnal relationship at the beginning, but we both knew there was something more there, and we worked on it."
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Finding happiness with Lincoln, 49, who tells HELLO!, they never take their love for granted and "We celebrate our marriage all the time," transformed Denise's life. "I was in my early fifties when Lincoln and I got together. I love having this great love so late in my life. We nurture our relationship, and we look after it because it is the bedrock of my life. If my relationship is good, I can deal with everything else."
Denise and Lincoln on their wedding day in 2013
The Loose Women star has been open about how mental illness has affected her life, but tells us, "Since 2019, despite the fact I lost my dad and we had the pandemic, I have not had a depressive episode in three years which is the longest in 33 years I have ever had. I am not saying it won’t ever come back, and I don’t know why it is that it has happened, but it has.
"So, every day that I wake up well, I intend to celebrate."
Unbreakable is now available to watch on demand on BBC iPlayer.
The full interview is in the next issue of HELLO!, out on 14th November
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