Grant and Chezzi Denyer tell-all on the truth about their marriage

From rumours of infidelity to drug addiction, they’re one of Australia’s most gossiped about couples. Now Grant and Chezzi Denyer sit down with Stellar and address it all in a no holds barred interview.

Of all the presumptions made about Grant Denyer over the years, one of the most enduring is that he is permanently cheerful. After all, this is a man who honed his craft on air as a breakfast TV weather presenter before moving on to host game shows – that’s a lot of smiling.

As such, and as Denyer moved from Sunrise weatherman on to Family Feud, he quickly assumed the mantle of the most genial man on television. With a cheeky grin, frenetic energy and constant quips, he had all the manic bounce of the Duracell Bunny. Similarly, he never switched off. Yet the trouble with manufactured personas is that they’re hard to maintain.

And when Stellar catches Denyer at home with his wife of 12 years, blogger Cheryl “Chezzi” Denyer – the rolling hills of the regional NSW city of Bathurst behind them and their baby daughter, Sunday, gurgling in their arms – he is calm, straightforward and ready to speak candidly about a life and career that, while successful, has attracted its fair share of scandal.

“It’s hard doing school pick-up when you’re worried everyone there thinks you’re the worst human in the world” (Picture: Daniel Nadel)

Last week, Denyer returned to TV screens as a contestant on Dancing With The Stars: All Stars. It’s his fourth time underneath the mirror ball, having won in 2006 and co-hosted alongside Amanda Keller in 2019 and 2020.

This go-round, he explains, was meant to be “a personal purge. I’ve spent a lot of time pretending to be the happy, smiley, TV game-show guy who gives away cars and cash. But that’s not real life. No-one can be that flawless 24/7 and so I thought, if I’m going to do this I’m going to wear my heart on my sleeve.

“I didn’t want to get back out there and be a fluffy goofball. I wanted my girls to see that it’s OK to fail, that pain is going to happen and you’re going to stumble, but you can pick yourself up and put one foot in front of the other when you don’t think you can do it.”

At 44 and after nearly two decades on programs like Australia’s Got Talent, It Takes Two, Slide Show and The Great AustralianSpelling Bee, Denyer is dropping the facade.

“I’ve had some sh*t times in my life,” he says, recalling the near-fatal monster-truck crash in 2008 that exploded his vertebrae – prompting fears he may not walk again – and left him addicted to painkillers, which in turn made him angry and abusive, especially towards Chezzi.

As he says, he was throwing pills down like M&Ms and didn’t care if he lived or died. When he eventually recovered from the injury and the subsequent addiction, he threw himself into a manic work and motor-racing schedule that eventually led to chronic fatigue and adrenal failure.

“I thought I was Superman because I’d recovered from a broken back and I was unstoppable,” he concedes.

“But I ran myself into the ground and collapsed in a heap. I didn’t know if I was going to make it out of that. It took me two big fails in my life to realise I have to be more measured.”

It would be easy to position Chezzi as some sort of saviour, a devoted partner and mother to Sailor, 10, Scout, 6, and Sunday, 1, who has stood by meekly as Grant spiralled. But the truth, as the Denyers tell it, is more confronting. And ugly.

Chezzi, who met Grant when she was his producer on Sunrise, was only just recovering from a near-death experience of her own when Grant broke his back. She’d been at a motor rally when a driver started his engine without checking, sending flames shooting in her direction, engulfing her, burning off all her body hair and causing her to suffer collapsed lungs.

“I didn’t know if I was going to make it out of that. It took me two big fails in my life to realise I have to be more measured.” (Picture: Daniel Nadel)

Yet there was no time to process her own trauma while Grant’s life hung in the balance. Or when, in the midst of a drug psychosis, he was screaming at her, calling her a “f**king bitch”, or demanding she get out of their house.

Only later, suffering post-natal anxiety, would she learn she also had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“We turned inwards so much we became completely co-dependent,” says Chezzi, 42, who orchestrated her husband’s withdrawal from medication.

“When Grant was unwell and couldn’t do anything, I did everything for him. We didn’t have a normal relationship, and so when he finally got back to being strong and feeling good, I felt completely lost. Because what was my existence? What had I been doing for the past six years? We had to unmesh ourselves, and that wasn’t easy. We’ve worked really hard because we felt that we deserved peace and happiness.”

Self-help books, kinesiology and, unwittingly, their popular joint podcast It’s All True? have been instrumental in healing their relationship, but Denyer says he’s still haunted by some of his behaviour.

“I was awfully scared that she would leave me, because who wants to look after an angry cripple?” Regular therapy sessions have taught him the value of self-examination and growth.

“I never had the language, I’ve never looked inward because I only ever chased the next goal. So I had to learn to do that,” he says.

“It was tricky because you have to confront a lot of uncomfortable truths. I’ve only ever spoken about things that are fun or exciting in my life. I’d never had conversations about painful things or uncomfortable things or embarrassing things. We never got to the nitty gritty of things that needed to be discussed; we’re now learning that later in our relationship, and that’s the game changer.”

Moving nearer to Chezzi’s parents and Grant’s beloved racetrack in country NSW has also simplified things. Although Sailor and Chezzi have been diagnosed with ADHD, the family regards it as a gift because it’s given them greater understanding.

Chezzi, for instance, now has an explanation for why she finds it so difficult to complete a task. As she says: “Ever since I was a kid I had this internal dialogue that I was tired and lazy, and never got anything right. But I’ve learnt to practise being focused and it’s given me a new lease on life.”

Being honest about their challenges has made their podcast a success; likewise, their his ’n’ hers Instagram pages give them a personal connection to their audience. Intriguingly, it was that outlet they turned to when scandal surrounded them yet again.

Late last year, in between rehearsals for Dancing With The Stars, a magazine published photographs of Grant with his hand on the thigh of his dance partner Lily Cornish. “Grant Denyer Caught Out!” exclaimed the headline, prompting the couple to take legal action that led to a published apology.

The Denyers could deal with previous false claims of methamphetamine addiction, relationship crises and stints in rehab, but slights against another were strictly out of bounds.

“I felt more sorry for Lily because we plucked her from her normal life and begged her to come and rehearse with Grant,” Chezzi explains about the arrangement that brought Cornish to Bathurst.

“I was there with them for most of the rehearsals, and she basically lived with us for a few months, so I know her in and out, and she’s a beautiful young girl, almost like another daughter.”

“I wanted my girls to see that it’s OK to fail, that pain is going to happen and you’re going to stumble, but you can pick yourself up and put one foot in front of the other when you don’t think you can do it.” (Picture: Daniel Nadel)

The couple remain bemused as to why they attract so much scandal, although Grant will concede that “I push the envelope a bit and I’m a little bit trickier than squeaky-clean guys like the wonderful Larry Emdur. I’m used to having stories made up about me. But it’s unfair to do that to a 22-year-old girl and make her out to be some sort of home wrecker. That’s why we went into a legal battle and won.”

And, he adds, “It was hard going to school to pick the kids up when you think that every other mother who’s there to pick up their children thinks you’re the worst human in the world. I grew up in my career being told to take every hit, but now with social media we have a voice and I don’t mind holding people accountable.”

Indeed, just as they spoke out in defence of Cornish’s reputation, they are also mindful that their children are being made aware of salacious headlines about their parents – and need to know what is worth believing.

“My kids are so used to it because we still have the covers from the magazines when they were born and the announcements of their births,” Chezzi explains.

“Half the stories that are written around their birth announcements have never happened, like ‘Tom and Nicole, blah, blah, blah.’ We always have a good giggle about that. My kids’ school over the years has started teaching them about fake news, and they’ve used our stories as examples.”

Fortunately, life in the country – where Grant takes great pleasure in mowing the lawns and watching his two eldest daughters go-karting in what he hopes will be the beginning of a love for motor sports – has brought both perspective and the chance to employ what he calls his “off button”. As he says, viewers underestimate the amount of energy required to host a game show.

“I want every contestant to have the most fun they’ve ever had. You never settle for second best. You want every show to be a winner, but that takes a lot of stamina and you have to dig deep to be able to pull that out recording six episodes a day. It’s pretty fatiguing.”

Meanwhile, Chezzi is pleased that the adrenaline and perfectionism her husband used to pump into his career and which left him depleted have been replaced with a new-found calm.

“I never knew that my heart could be as full as what it is now,” Chezzi says.

“Every day, I wake up and think how lucky I am to be in a relationship with my soulmate, my very best friend, and have these beautiful children. The kids still say to us all the time, ‘Kiss each other,’ or ‘Hold hands.’ We are quite soppy in that regard, and I think that’s so special, and I don’t for a second take that for granted, because a lot of people don’t get to experience that.”

The Denyers star on this Sunday’s Stellar.

And despite all the background noise, Grant still loves the career that made him a household name, so much so that the Gold Logie he won in 2018 takes pride of place on custom-built shelves that visitors see as soon as they walk in his front door – and which he showcases to Stellar during our video call.

“I guess I’d been treated like a little bit of a novelty until then,” he says, smiling. “I didn’t realise how much being recognised by my peers meant to me until it happened.”

While he can still tap into the game-show hosts’ trademark ebullience, a greater nuance and honesty now underpins his forthcoming projects, including a dramedy series he’s written in a tone not dissimilar to Ricky Gervais’ After Life.

“I’m sick of pretending to be flawless,” he says. “That’s really boring and it doesn’t offer anything to anyone. I sort of used it to get where I was. But now I want to find a deeper version of my authentic self.”

Dancing With The Stars: All Stars airs at 7pm Sundays on the Seven Network.

Originally published as Grant and Chezzi Denyer tell-all on the truth about their marriage