BEFORE couples got together on Love Island or Married At First Sight, there was a dating show wedding that captured hearts like no other.
Blind Date, presented by Cilla Black, brought together lovebirds Sue and Alex Tatham in 1988.
Sue and Alex Tatham met on Blind Date in 1988 and have now been together for over 30 years[/caption]
And three years later, over 17million viewers tuned in to watch them tie the knot at a village church in Walsall in the West Midlands.
The reason for the intense excitement?
They were the very first couple from the show to say “I do”.
In fact, the announcement of their nuptials was front page news and the ITV programme’s much-loved host Cilla was elated about getting a “new hat” for the big day.
Now, 33 years later, the couple have renewed their vows at the same church.
And Alex, 59, an IT company director, reveals that good fortune played a part in bringing them together.
In the popular TV format, which ran for 22 series, one picker had to select from three potential suitors hidden behind a screen.
Later, the couple would return to the show to give the verdict on their date.
On one very special episode, Alex was the man asking questions of three mystery women and deciding who had the best replies.
But he was too anxious to properly take in Sue’s answers.
He tells The Sun: “I was the most nervous I have ever been.
“It zoomed past.
“I had absolutely no idea who to choose.
“I was doing ‘Eeny, meeny, miny, moe’.
“And if you look at the clip, you’ll see that’s what I was doing.
“And, you know, fate lent a hand.”
When Sue, now a 59-year-old retired nursery school teacher, emerged for the first time dressed all in denim, the couple never imagined they would still be together three decades later.
Alex recalls: “When Sue and I walked off set, having taken our first ever glimpse of each other, we said, ‘We’re going to remember this for the rest of our lives.
“Let’s make sure that we’re friends for ever’.
“And that’s the attitude we went into that show with.”
But love blossomed over the next couple of years and, after marrying, they made a home in Balham, South London, and had two children, Emily, now 30, and Charlie, 28.
Cilla even attended the couple’s wedding[/caption]
Bizarre circumstances are a theme in Sue and Alex’s relationship.
At the end of last year, a social media influencer stopped them on the street to ask how they met, not realising who they were.
The video went viral on TikTok.
Alex says: “Everyone goes, ‘Surely it was a set up’.
“But no, it was totally random.
“This bloke came up to us and said, ‘Can I ask you how you two met?’. I go, ‘Yeah, we met on telly’.”
Another twist of fate led to the couple renewing their vows on a very special date at St Michael & All Angels Church, in Pelsall, on the outskirts of Walsall, which was celebrating its 180th anniversary.
The vicar asked Sue, who grew up in the area, and Alex if they would like to be part of the event on October 19.
They gladly agreed.
Alex explains: “The vicar said that, on the Sunday, they were going to have a special service celebrating wedding renewals, and asked if we’d like to be part of it.
“That happened to be the date of our 33rd wedding anniversary.
“It was an amazing weekend.”
‘HEAVILY CHAPERONED’
The church was packed and ten more couples joined them in renewing their vows.
In the Eighties, the excitement around the couple’s romance was largely driven by the fact most of the show’s dates were spectacular failures.
Rarely did the suitors have anything in common.
And often they would have gone their separate ways by the final day of their weekend away.
Even though the staple of Saturday night telly started in 1985, Sue and Alex were the first ones to get wed — six years later.
And by the time Cilla’s run as host came to an end in 2003, only two more had made the same commitment.
Cilla, who died in 2015 aged 72, was replaced by Paul O’Grady for a reboot in 2017.
But that only lasted a couple of years and, sadly, Paul passed away aged 67 in March last year.
Alex and Sue both went on the show in 1988 with no expectations.
Sue says: “It was an adventure.
“I was keen to see how a TV show was made and how glamorous it was.
The couple went viral on TikTok for telling their story[/caption]
“It wasn’t.
“Finding a date and finding a husband was not on my mind at all.
“It’s amazing that it happened.”
The couple also did not do it for the holiday, which was often a wet weekend somewhere in Britain.
Alex felt lucky that their date was a mediaeval banquet in Ireland because the other couple on the same show had gone to Portsmouth.
And ITV was not chasing viewing figures with the kind of kiss and tell tales that are part and parcel of today’s reality shows.
Alex reveals: “For our date, Sue and I were put in hotels five miles apart.
“It was very demure, and they sort of tutted when we touched each other.
“It does feel rather a long way removed from Love Island.
“We were very heavily chaperoned.
“They were probably worried about sex before marriage.
“It was company time.
“They were nervous.
“There’s no question about it.”
Once the getaway organised by the Blind Date production team had ended, the couple were supposed to go their separate ways.
‘‘VERY MAGICAL’
Sue recalls with a smile: “We asked if we could go to a nightclub.
“They said, ‘No, your date’s over’.”
After returning to the show to tell Cilla all about their getaway, Alex and Sue kept seeing each other, despite living 130 miles apart.
Two years later, Old Etonian Alex proposed and thought it would be nice to share their happy news with Blind Date’s producers.
The story about his engagement to Sue, who went to a comprehensive, appeared on the front page of The Sun.
Little did they know that involving the TV show would mean six camera crews “in morning suits” were there to record their big day — along with host Cilla.
The couple, however, were not nervous about their presence.
Sue says: “Cilla blended in.
“She didn’t take centre stage.
“We had the wedding we wanted to have, even though it was filmed.
“She made sure it was our day.
“Very magical.”
Having got hitched on the Saturday, the highlights of the wedding were broadcast on a Blind Date special the following evening — which saw 17million viewers tune in.
But the couple did draw a line at any cameras following them on their honeymoon in Mauritius.
They went back on Blind Date again after their daughter, Emily, was born — and they stayed in touch with Cilla.
For a while their children were “appallingly embarrassed” looking back on the Eighties perm haircuts and shoulder pads their mum wore at the time, but now they think it is a “lovely” story.
There has been talk of bringing Blind Date back after the successful reboot of another Nineties TV hit, Gladiators, on BBC One.
And Alex thinks it is a great idea.
He says: “It’s changed my life.
“I can assure you it is still entertaining me every day.”
‘A day I won’t forget’
By Garth Pearce
I’VE interviewed virtually every major film star and the biggest names in rock music.
But nothing compares with the romantic thrill of the Blind Date wedding.
Bride Sue was from my old mining village of Pelsall, near Walsall, on the edge of the Black Country.
Alex was the posh bloke, educated at Eton, but without a snobbish bone in his body.
As for the church, built in 1844, it was personal.
St Michael & All Angels was where my grandparents married directly after World War One and my parents just a few weeks after the end of World War Two.
It was packed on that sunny day on October 19, 1991 – and I would think that half the village turned out to line the streets and applaud the wedding cars.
Cilla Black made her grand entrance, of course, seated in a large hat directly in line with the altar for filming purposes.
And those in the church seemed to raise the Victorian roof with the first hymn – Praise, My Soul, The King Of Heaven – directly before the ceremony.
The happiness seemed to come in layers thicker than the huge cake itself, which was waiting at the reception in Swinfen Hall, near Lichfield.
First was the fact that Blind Date finally had a wedding after six years of attempting to match up likely couples on television.
Second, it was with a couple who were clearly madly in love.
And third? A conviction among everyone attending, me included, that this would be a marriage to last.
