Adam Yates and Katrina Blowers’ epic Maldives proposal
Featuring a pool filled with a million rose petals that were shipped in from 2000km away, this Channel 7 newsreader’s proposal was next level.
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Katrina Blowers has learned to expect the unexpected working in a job that throws her into unpredictable situations.
But the Brisbane-based news anchor and journalist was utterly blindsided when she found herself at the centre of an elaborate surprise.
Blowers’ boyfriend of 2½ years, Adam Yates, pulled off a lavish proposal while the pair were on a trip to the Maldives and it left the newsreader in “absolute disbelief”.
“I’m usually pretty alert to clues and things but he really got me going, it really surprised me,” says Blowers, the Seven Network’s news anchor for the weekend 6pm bulletin in Brisbane.
“I was just blown away. It’s made me feel honestly so, so special and the level of thought and attention to detail that he went to is incredible.”
In scenes straight out of a film, “one million” rose petals covered the pool of the couple’s overwater villa in the Maldives, surrounding a wooden sign saying “Will you marry me?”
Blowers thought she was on a months-in-planning birthday trip for Yates, Surfing Queensland’s chief executive officer and former pro surfer, in celebration of his 40th and was left speechless. Even more impressive, however, is how Yates orchestrated the spectacle. With no roses on the tiny island, he had “hundreds” of the single-stemmed flowers shipped from India to the Maldives, about 2000km away.
Blowers was shocked by the detail, saying staff spent “the whole day individually peeling the petals off the roses to fill the pool”.
“The level of effort was next level, it was just beyond,” she says. “I don’t know how many roses but I do know there were four giant wooden creates filled with roses that had to be delivered to this tiny island in the middle of The Maldives. Probably a couple of hundred.”
Yates proposed with “the exact ring” Blowers had dreamt of – an oval-shaped diamond on a thin gold band, but one detail made the surprise even sweeter for Blowers when Yates let her children, a daughter, 15 and son, 13, who she shares with her ex-husband, in on the secret.
“He (Yates) had taken them aside the week before we went away and asked for their blessing,” she says.
“That of course meant the world to me that he had been so thoughtful to do that at all and they were in on it.
“But they bloody kept a secret from me, so that doesn’t bode well for the teenage years,” she joked. “It was super magical.”
It’s been a rocky road for Blowers to get here, happy, content and in love, since divorcing her ex-husband. The pair had been together for 17 years, married for nine and share two kids together but ended their marriage more than four years ago.
As a busy working mum, Blowers says she “wasn’t expecting” to find love again and can’t believe her luck.
“It just feels so amazing to have that person again and to be on that journey again with someone,” she says. “I guess I didn’t know whether or not that would happen for me.”
Blowers met Yates, who has also been married before, through friend and fellow Seven Network presenter, Liz Cantor, after a conversation in the work corridors. “I was leaving work and I ran into Liz Cantor … it had been a while since I’d seen her … we just got talking and she asked me what I was up to.
“I mentioned that I was single but ready to get back out there again and start dating but I didn’t want to go on the apps and I said to her, ‘so if you have any friends or you know of anyone, let me know’.
“By the time I’d driven home, which is only a 10-minute drive, she had already messaged Adam, who is her childhood friend, and told him all about me.”
That night Yates and Blowers started messaging and a few days later went on their first date to Stanley at Howard Smith Wharves. They’ve been together now for more than
two years.
“I thought he was really friendly and he’s got these really beautiful blue eyes, I remember looking at those and being like ‘wow’.
“We had so much to talk about, we had so much to laugh about and it was just really easy right from the beginning. It was really just the right place and right time for both of us.”
Blowers talks candidly of the pair’s transition into a modern family and her early hesitations, saying it’s been a “steep learning curve” for Yates but one he’s embraced.
“Before he met them, of course that played on my mind of how that would all go,” she says of Yates meeting her kids. “Motherhood was a big transition for me and I had time to build up to it; now for him, it was like instant family.
“To go from zero to two teenagers has been a baptism by fire but in the best possible way.
“He said to me very early on that he was keen to be a father figure in their lives … the kids were open to that too.”
It was a shift for Yates, says Blowers, who she thought once pictured having kids of his own before he met her. But life had other plans which he’s wholeheartedly embraced, she says.
“I can’t speak for him but it (having his own kids) probably was something that he thought was in his future but it’s just turned out differently,” she says. “We do see ourselves as a family, it’s just a different kind of family.
“I’m fortunate that I grew up with a stepdad so I know that sometimes the family you choose can have just as much meaning, if not more, than the one you’re given.
“So that has helped with the way I view it and I’ve been able to explain to him about the role of the stepdad in the kids’ lives as well.”
Blowers praises how easily Yates has slipped into being a stepdad and, she says, their unconventional situation.
“The kids still have their dad and Adam and him have met and that’s all very amicable and we all work together,” she says. “I know it sounds super weird but we all work together to raise the kids, we’re all on the same page, we all have regular conversations about how we want the kids to be parented and we’re all involved.”
With Yates based on the Gold Coast and Blowers in Brisbane, the pair split their time between cities. It’s a finely tuned schedule, says Blowers, but one they make work and will play out indefinitely while Blowers’ kids are in school in Brisbane, along with her work.
“We said at the start, ‘OK, so we live in different cities but we’re just going to make it work’.
“For the time being, we’re just going to make it work, we know eventually we will live together, but we’re not quite sure how that’s going to look just yet and I think that’s exciting.
“It’s OK to not have everything figured out as well.”
As for the wedding, that’s also up in the air, but Blowers does have a few non-negotiables.
“We want it to be a very intimate thing with just immediate family, it’s probably going to be by the beach, it’s probably going to involve Stanley, Adam’s gold retriever, and it’s definitely going to involve my kids.
“Beyond that, I don’t know yet.”
For now, she’s revelling in her happiness and embracing the journey with a man she had hopes she’d find but can’t believe she did.
“I feel so extraordinarily lucky that I get to share my life with somebody who makes me feel so comfortable and happy and embraces my kids as well and who my kids adore.
“Life has a funny way of, of turning out, doesn’t it?”
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Originally published as Adam Yates and Katrina Blowers’ epic Maldives proposal
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