‘We started spending a lot of time together’: MasterChef stars’ secret romance revealed

In their first interview as a couple, two stars of MasterChef Australia reveal their unexpected romance – and how they got together.

From the moment they met, when MasterChef Australia: Back To Win began filming last November in Melbourne, returning contestants Sarah Todd and Declan Cleary knew they were kindred spirits.

“It’s such an intense process that you’re drawn to people who are like-minded,” Todd, 38, tells Stellar.

“We instantly got along and started spending a lot of time together,” adds Cleary, 27. “Nothing was ever rushed or forced – we just enjoyed spending time together. And Sarah, being from Melbourne, knew all the places to go. So we’d go to the beach, or go-karting, and we went out for lots of dinners.”

Soon, the show’s pressure-cooker environment drew the pair even closer. Todd admits that builder Cleary’s innate energy and enthusiasm provided a welcome distraction from the tense atmosphere in the TV kitchen.

In a Stellar exclusive, Sarah Todd and Declan Cleary have revealed they are dating. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Yet it wasn’t until restaurateur Todd was facing elimination that Cleary suddenly realised he felt more than mere friendship.

“I was [panicking]: ‘Oh sh*t. I’ve been spending all this time with this bloody amazing chick and now she might be leaving!’” he says.

“And so, as she’s walking into the elimination [challenge], I said, ‘Sarah, can I ask you something? Would you like to go on a date with me?’ And she just looked at me and said, ‘You’re a bloody idiot!’”

Stunned by Cleary’s poorly timed invitation, Todd took a long while to digest the

offer.

“After I got through the stress of the elimination and had a couple of days to recover, I realised it made sense,” she says.

“It was a nice progression [of our friendship] and I wanted to go for it.” For their first official date, they spent a cosy weekend in Grampians National Park.

“It was very romantic,” Cleary recalls of exploring regional markets and restaurants in the picturesque highlands of central Victoria, and waking up a bleary Todd to go on a hike at the break of dawn.

The pair have opened up about how they got together. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

‘It’s something I’ve been quite private about.’ Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

“When we got to the top [of the mountain],” Todd remembers with a smile, “he opened his backpack. He’d made this beautiful breakfast spread that we sat there and ate together”.

While a picnic with a view might make an ideal one-on-one date on The Bachelor, neither Cleary nor Todd had considered themselves candidates for a reality TV romance.

“It can be difficult when your career and your personal life start to mesh into one,” Todd says. “It’s something I’ve been quite private about. So it’s nice to feel we want to talk about this relationship. It’s been really special.”

Safeguarding the happiness of Phoenix, her 14-year-old son with her former fiancé, has always been paramount for Todd.

That’s why she was both relieved and thrilled that before she and Cleary began dating, he and Phoenix had already developed an easy rapport.

“We have such a close bond, and we’ve been through a lot throughout the years,” she says of her son.

“I’m very mindful of that. I don’t bring people into his life and then take people away.

“It’s unfair for a kid to go through that. The nice thing about this relationship is that they had got to know each other a little bit and built that bond before being thrown in the deep end.”

Since Cleary left his home on Sydney’s northern beaches with his dog – a Vizsla named Sol – to move in with Todd in Melbourne, he has revelled in his new stepfatherly household duties, taking pride in putting together enviable school lunches for Phoenix and creating dinners for the family.

“I’m cooking real wholesome food for them,” he says.

“[Phoenix] was a bit crook the other day, so I was up at 5am making chicken soup from scratch. I just wake up naturally at 5am – being a builder, it’s in my blood. So while the other two are lounging in bed, I’m making the sambos or the soup.”

Another favourite pastime for the couple is watching their relationship subtly play out onscreen through weekly episodes of MasterChef Australia.

And while they acknowledge their 11-year age difference, neither see it as an obstacle. Rather, Cleary says simply that Todd allows him to be unapologetically himself.

“Not only is she the most grounded, intelligent and creative person I’ve ever met, she has always appreciated me for who I am,” he says.

“We connected through life experience; we’ve both been through a lot. We share the same values. There’s great chemistry between us. She keeps me classy, and I keep her a bit cheeky. Age is just background noise.”

MasterChef Australia: Back To Win continues on Sundays at 7pm, and Mondays to Wednesdays at 7.30pm, on Network 10 and 10 Play.

See the full shoot with Sarah and Declan in today’s Stellar with Laura Henshaw on the cover, inside The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA).

For more from Stellar and the podcast, Something To Talk About, click here.

Originally published as ‘We started spending a lot of time together’: MasterChef stars’ secret romance revealed