I rekindled my holiday romance and got married 10 years later

Watch: I rekindled my holiday romance and got married 10 years later

A mum has shared how she rekindled her holiday romance, getting married and becoming a step- and biological-mother 10 years after meeting her now-husband in Cyprus.

Zoe Shepherd-Scott, 33, was working as a club promoter when she first met Michael Shepherd-Scott in 2012, when the 33 year old was visiting Ayai Napa with friends.

They struck up a romance and met up several time during his trip, with Zoe even commenting to a friend she thought she’d met the man she’d marry one day.

“I don’t remember what we spoke about when I met Michael, but I remember how he made me feel,” Zoe says. “There was an immediate connection, and I had this gut feeling about us.”

But after a week Michael returned home to Leeds and a few months later Zoe headed back to the UK to start a course at the University of Bournemouth. While they continued to message for a while, they eventually lost touch.

“We were both in very different places in life,” she says. “He was focused on his career, and I was about to start my course. We ended up drifting apart, but we kept liking each other’s photos on Facebook.”

It was only after Zoe decided to send Michael a drunken message they got back in contact. Fast forward 10 years and the couple are now happily married and have welcomed their first child together, while Zoe has become a step mum to Michael’s two children from a previous relationship.

Five years later, in 2019, Zoe had just gone through a break-up when she met with a friend. They were discussing past relationship, and her friend reminded her about her holiday romance with Michael.

“We had a few bottles of wine, and I looked him up online,” she says. “He had two children but was also single. I genuinely wasn’t expecting anything to come from it, but I sent a message to see how he was doing and it was like no time had passed. We immediately hit it off again.”

Zoe, who was working as an air steward at the time, left her job and moved to Yorkshire to live with Michael in 2020. “It was definitely tough at times – I moved my entire life there,” Zoe explains. “I never expected to become a step mum. But we took it all slowly, and the kids were so welcoming. Through all of it, Michael was so loving and supportive. I knew I had made the right decision.”

During a trip to Greece in September 2020, Michael proposed to Zoe and they tied the knot two years later in May 2022 in Athens, Greece, with 55 close family and friends. “It was such a magical wedding,” Zoe says.

In 2023, the couple were overjoyed to welcome their son Leo, who is now 20-months-old. “We’ve got through some difficult times, but throughout all of it I’ve had Michael by my side,” Zoe says. “Things might not always seem like the fairytale you envision, but if put in the work it can be so much better.”

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