Megan Gale reveals her heartwarming wedding secret
Megan Gale has squashed rumours of a wedding next year to fiance and Australian Survivor but has revealed one secret detail and it will warm your heart.
U on Sunday
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He was a 23-year-old rising AFL star with Carlton Football Club. She was a 35-year-old Australian supermodel and one of the world’s most beautiful women.
Shaun Hampson and Megan Gale’s relationship was outed in early 2011, only months after Gale split with popular Australian comedian, Andy Lee, after four years together.
All the public saw was a model on the rebound with a hot, young footballer 13 years her junior.
It was just for fun, the critics said. A fling that would never last.
Gale warned Hampson their relationship was likely to “blow up” in the media but he didn’t care. He was all in.
“We were so caught up in each other and getting to know each other and falling in love that we weren’t too concerned,” Hampson tells U on Sunday. “I’m a firm, firm believer that age is just a number … even though there is an age difference, I have more in common with her on our views on life and interests than I do with anybody else.”
Eight years later, the couple are engaged and have two children together — Rosie, almost 2, and River, 5 — and their relationship has quite obviously risen above the doubters.
But Gale says it’s taken this long to convince people of their love story and it’s only now, as they get to know the man behind the model, that they’re beginning to believe her.
“I was labelled a cougar, he was labelled a toy boy and he was this young footballer I’d hooked up with,” Gale, 44, tells U on Sunday.
“I was quite taken aback by that because that’s all our relationship was coming down to, our age difference, not how awesome he is as a human. It belittled both of us and our relationship.”
Hampson, who grew up in Daisy Hill in Logan City, south of Brisbane, has unsurprisingly caught the nation’s attention as he competes on Ten’s Australian Survivor: Champions V Contenders.
With a powerful presence at 201cm and an undeniable strength, he’s fast becoming one of the strongest players of the season. And, according to Gale, it’s a platform for people to see who he really is. “He has so many layers to him and there’s so much depth to him and now, I’m thrilled [that] through this show people can see that and I’m so incredibly lucky to have him in my life,” says Gale, who has been engaged to Hampson since 2017.
Speaking from their Melbourne home, having already wrapped filming for Survivor, Hampson is just as thoughtful, considerate and kind as I remember him from when we were classmates at John Paul College.
Back then, as a sportsman and a house captain, he was popular, well-rounded and down-to-earth. As we catch up, discussing old friends and laughing at school yearbook photos, he hasn’t changed. But there’s no doubting his life has.
Born in Melbourne, Hampson moved to Brisbane at the age of two with his parents, Dee and Tom, and older sister, Stefanie, now 34, who now works for the royal family in Qatar.
Throughout his schooling, at Chatswood Hills State School and John Paul College, Hampson always excelled at sport. But it wasn’t until 2004, in Year 11, that he discovered his talents for AFL and a year later, joined Mount Gravatt Football Club to become the club’s number one ruckman.
Discussions soon began with recruiters and in 2006, Hampson was picked up by Carlton and moved his life to Melbourne. With huge athletic ability, Hampson started strong, playing in Carlton’s senior team for six years before moving to Richmond in 2013.
He’d found a certain level of fame, as AFL players do in Victoria but looking back, Hampson realises how drastically his life changed when he fell for Gale in 2011.
“To go from Daisy Hill to being recognised out for lunch or at the shops (as an AFL player) to then obviously getting together with Megan … it’s a whole different world,” says Hampson, who along with Gale owns the trendy Ascot Food Store cafe in Melbourne with friend Dave Stewart.
Hampson met Gale, oddly enough, through Lee, who was an avid Carlton fan.
“Andy was mates with one of my mates from the club and I used to see her around a bit,” Hampson recalls. “She always seemed really nice and (when) they broke up, we got chatting and it went from there. It was a case of the right place at the right time.”
Hampson was thrust into the public eye when their relationship became public and over the years, has had alarming reminders of just who he is dating. For starters, the relentless and invasive paparazzi.
“We’ve had cars follow us for hours and wait outside the front of the house or follow us to the shops or to the cafe,” Hampson says.
“The reality is, she is not an average girl and she is in the public eye and she is a person that people want to know about, they want to know what she’s doing, who she’s been doing it with and what her kids look like.
“There is a lot of negative that comes with being with somebody like Megan … but it’s something I had to learn to deal with and it’s more than worth putting up with to be with her.”
For Hampson, she’s never been Megan Gale the model, superstar or beauty icon or the Megan the public feels like they know. She’s “Megsy”, as he affectionately calls her; the mother of his children, soon-to-be wife, and best mate.
“She’s just so normal to me, that’s what I love about her, it doesn’t feel like I’m dating somebody who is big because she is so down-to-earth, so private and has such a good sense of humour,” he says. Gale echoes the adoration, saying Hampson is the man she’d been looking for.
“He has had a wonderful influence on me and has really helped me … he helps me to be a better person in day-to-day life,” she says.
As a couple, they’ve faced their share of adversities; a miscarriage in 2016, the loss of Hampson’s father to prostate cancer just before River was born and months later, the death of Gale’s dad. Through it all, Hampson says they’ve never wavered and have always been “rock solid.”
“One thing we’ve always done is be there for each other through the hardest times,” he says.
“When my dad passed away, she was a rock, she stepped up and organised the funeral for us and she was amazing. When her dad passed away a few months later, I like to hope I reciprocated and I was a rock for her.
“We help each other get through it, it’s the same with the miscarriage, we supported each other and she was a champion through that stage.
“It was a day or two prior to her having to go to Italy for Australia’s Next Top Model and she had to have the (surgery to get the) baby removed and nobody would’ve known.”
Just as Hampson has been there for Gale, she’s been there for him, getting him through crippling injuries which eventually forced him into retirement from AFL in June last year.
“There were some really tough times and she (Megan) was always there for me and there to
help me.
“I can’t imagine what that all would’ve been like without her.”
Over the years, Hampson has had 12 operations; four on his right knee, four on his left knee, an ankle reconstruction and screws in his pinky finger. But the worst was a degenerative disc in his back. Each game he played, it got worse. “Whenever I got up and running and was playing really good football, I’d get injured … at times I was like, ‘What is going on? I’m working hard, I’m a good guy, do I deserve this?’ But it’s the way it goes,” says Hampson, who missed Richmond’s premiership-winning game in 2017 to injury.
“Some guys can go 300 games straight without an injury but I’m just more injury-prone.
“In the space of 18 months, I would’ve had a needle in or near my spine about 15 times.”
The pain started to affect his mental health and the way he was around his kids and that’s when he knew it was time to call it quits.
“The back injury was difficult because it was so long and relentless and it was really affecting me outside of football and that was mentally the hardest,” he says.
He could be bitter and hold on to what could have been in a career he never had the chance to fully realise but that’s not who Hampson is. He’s grateful not for what he didn’t have, but for what he did.
“I was really lucky that I had an amazing support network at home with Megan and our two kids and my mum,” he says.
“A lot of guys who finish footy, they don’t have a partner or kids and I own the cafe with a chef friend so I have all that to look forward too as well, so I was very grateful for that.”
Just when he could’ve so easily lost his way after giving up AFL, as the only thing he’s ever known or done, in came the chance to be on Survivor at just the right time.
Having been a fan of the show since he was 12, Hampson was approached by producers last year to be part of this year’s season. Initially, Gale was hesitant.
“The part of me who parents with him was like, ‘Please don’t go and leave me’,” she says. “But I said to him ‘as if I’m not going to let you go and live out your childhood dream,’ I couldn’t live with myself if I prevented him from doing that.”
Rather than a Champion, Hampson started as a Contender, a fit the modest athlete was much more comfortable with.
As much as he’s proving his strength and physical power, Hampson has also shown he has heart, writing “Happy Birthday Riv” in the sand when he missed his son’s fifth birthday.
Hampson may be a rising reality-TV star and Gale an entrepreneur, having recently launched skincare range The Mindful Life, but the couple says life is as normal as it comes.
“It’s as average as you can get, I’m picking up River from school, or Megsy is, and then it’s about getting dinner ready and after dinner it’s bath and bed routine,” says Hampson of their family life.
“There is the odd thing that crops up every now and again that isn’t so average but 80 per cent of our lives is just like anybody else’s. It couldn’t sound less glamorous … it’s average in the most beautiful way possible.”
It may be a normal existence but at their core, it’s impossible to stay under the radar for too long. As we speak, the glamour couple continue to make headlines and this time it’s over their apparent wedding next year. But Gale is quick to clear up the rumours with U on Sunday.
“I have no idea where that came from,” she laughs, “I don’t even know what we’re doing for Christmas. We’ve not set a date but we’re definitely waiting until Rosie is old enough to remember it and that will not be next year because I think she’ll still be too young.
“I don’t have a dress, I don’t have a location, I don’t have a guest list, there’s nothing, and
a date? Absolutely not because we’re just too busy … we’re in no rush, we’ve got the kids.”
Gale did reveal one detail she knows for certain; River will be best man and Rosie Maid of Honour.
“There was a definite knowing when I met him that this wasn’t someone I was just going to date and have fun with … he is one in a million,” she says. “He’s the most wonderful person, he is my best friend, the best father and co-parent and I could not ask for a more amazing guy.”
Australian Survivor: Champions V Contenders, Channel 10, Sunday to Tuesday, 7.30pm
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