Sonny Bill Williams reveals why he and his wife Alana married without being in love

Sonny Bill Williams met and married his wife Alana within four weeks of meeting and reveals why the love flowed after they exchanged vows and not before.

Sonny Bill Williams says he and his wife Alana and their four children are a tight-knit unit.

After years of womanising, Sonny Bill Williams decided to marry Alana Raffie within four weeks of meeting her, despite admitting the pair did not love each other.

In one of the major revelations in his autobiography, Williams recalls chatting up Alana while she worked at a Sydney retail store in 2013, and details how one month from their initial chaperoned first date they took the plunge hoping that love would eventually follow.

“From a Westernised way of living – the way I grew up living – it’s a weird concept,” Williams said in an exclusive interview with The Saturday Telegraph.

Sonny Bill Williams says he and his wife Alana did not love each other when they first got married.

“When we got together, straight away we said we’re going to do it ­Islamically correct, so even in that first four weeks I wasn’t with her by myself, we always had a chaperone – her cousin and cousin’s husband.

“The way I lived, I was a product of my society. I grew up partying, womanising, putting substances into my body – drugs and alcohol – but a lot of the time I was patted on the back.

“That’s the way of life if we’re going to be honest about it, but it gave me a lot of unhappiness.”

When the two first met, Alana wouldn’t give him her number at first, asking him how many other women he had approached that day.

Sonny Bill Williams is happily married to his wife Alana but she wouldn’t give him her number at first.

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He says in his book he liked the fact she was a woman “who wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself or call me out, and I guess that only made me want to get to know her more”.

After two weeks she finally messaged him and “they talked”.

“So when we got together and decided to do it religiously the right way, I had nothing to lose,” Williams said. “It was all about respect; she has rights over me, I have rights over her, striving to be the best husband I could be, she was striving to be the best wife she could be.

“So there was a lot of respect and, Alhamdulillah, we grew to love each other.

“She grew to love my faults, I grew to love her faults, we grew to love each other’s strengths.

“And if I didn’t have that mindset, I don’t know if we’d be as happy as we are today.”

Family portrait of Sonny Bill Williams with Alana and their children.

Williams and Alana have since had four children together and the sporting star credits the couple’s shared dedication to Islam for putting an end to his days as a Lothario.

“I won’t lie, one of the biggest tests for me was women,” Williams said. “But the discipline I’ve had and my sporting career, in my life, I’ve been able to turn that around and strive to be authentic and be a good man, and trying to be the best husband I could be.

“Our shared faith and living for something greater than oneself is what I put it down to.

“Our life is a work in progress, me and my wife. It’s not all roses, but we have moments of really good times.

“From the get-go, I was really clear in saying we need to live for something greater than ourselves if we are to be happy eventually. That’s what we’ve done.

“It’s been a beautiful process, with a lot of lows and a lot of highs, but we sit here now and we’re really close, our communication levels are awesome, we have four little blessings that have taught us a lot about ourselves.”

WILLIAMS DRIVEN BY A DESTINY GREATER THAN HIMSELF

By Jamie Pandaram

ONE of the most surprising ­aspects of Sonny Bill Williams’ life story is that he’s always had the motivation to train hard from childhood.

Like many, I’d assumed ­Williams was a wonderfully ­gifted teenager who developed his famed work ethic once he ­entered the professional sporting world guided by specialist strength-and-conditioning coaches.

Yet as he reveals in his book, while his childhood peers were playing video games he was doing road runs around the rough South Auckland streets he grew up in. He didn’t know why, he just felt it was necessary.

An early family portrait of Williams with his mother and father and older brother Johnny.

Williams reflects on that now and understands it was because of the promise he’d made to himself as a youngster – to buy his mother a house with nice wallpaper. There was a destiny greater than himself.

And that is also how he turned his life around from troubled footballer to dedicated family man.

Many men could only dream of being SBW when he first hit the big time in the NRL – superstar athlete, big money, his pick of women. The drugs, booze and parties came with the territory.

Only, for Williams, the lusty pleasures left him hollow.

Sonny Bill Williams is set to release his autobiography.

It was only after finding ­religion, and studying Islam, that Williams grew to understand his own identity and understand he needed to live for a destiny greater than himself.

From “Money Bill”, Williams has transformed himself into an authoritative role model.

He is empowering his Polynesian community and helping to transform attitudes towards Muslims in Australia. He is a man of great conviction, and he matches his words with deeds, as witnessed by his leadership during the awful Christchurch earthquakes and mosque massacre.

For all of his astonishing achievements in sport, Williams continues to battle self-doubt, but nowadays embraces new challenges to grow. What began with road runs as a child has led to Williams’ discovery that there is no finish line to self-development.

Sonny Bill Williams, You Can’t Stop The Sun From Shining, with Alan Duff, published by Hachette Australia, available from October 13, 2021, RRP $49.99

Originally published as Sonny Bill Williams reveals why he and his wife Alana married without being in love