Charlotte Church and Gavin Henson were together for five years and the Welsh singing sensation says she had to ask her ex’s permission to start dating her future husband
Harry Brent Senior Sports Writer
12:24, 22 Oct 2025
Charlotte Church asked Gavin Henson for his blessing to date her new boyfriend weeks after their split(Image: Getty Images)
Charlotte Church didn’t waste any time after her split from Welsh rugby icon Gavin Henson.
The pair were an item for five years, had two children together and were briefly engaged. But that didn’t stop Church from pursuing another relationship mere weeks after their split in 2010.
Shortly after it emerged she was dating musician Jonathan Powell – now her husband – Church revealed she felt duty-bound to ask Gavin for his blessing before making things official. “I’d been writing with Johnny for a while, but it was a good couple of months after me and Gav split,” she told the BBC in 2010.
“I kind of asked Gav’s permission in a way. I said to him, ‘I really want you to know that nothing ever went on between me and Johnny while we were still together.’
“Johnny had a girlfriend when we were first working together, and I had Gav. And I’m not that type of person. I hadn’t really noticed any feelings at that point. When I’m a taken woman, I’m a taken woman – that’s the way I see things.”
Church began dating Henson, who won 33 caps for Wales and also represented the British and Irish Lions, in 2005. Two years later, their daughter Ruby was born and in 2009, their son Dexter arrived.
Charlotte Church’s relationship with Gavin Henson was constantly in the papers(Image: Getty Images)
Dubbed ‘the Welsh Posh and Becks’, their relationship was covered extensively in the media, which took a significant toll on the pair. “The press intrusion was insane, there was all sorts of dark stuff going on,” Church said earlier this month ahead of her appearance on The Celebrity Traitors.
“There were stories in the papers all the time and lots of things were blown up, misconstrued and made seedy – when they really weren’t. There was a lot of shame being thrown at me, with the press desperately trying to make me a figure of sin and push this ‘fallen angel’ narrative.”
During a high-profile legal battle, which was eventually settled in 2012, it was revealed Church had been put under surveillance by News Group Newspaper journalists and her medical records had been hacked. Church said her fury and defiance at the situation helped her survive the media scrutiny and coverage, and “kept me protected”.
“If I had let that shame in, or internalised it, my life could have gone in a very different way,” she said.
Church said media intrusion into her life was “insane”.(Image: Mark Kerrison, In Pictures via Getty Images)
On the face of it, their high-profile relationship was the stuff of dreams. But behind the scenes, problems were slowly emerging, with the pair living vastly different lifestyles. “We were such different people in every way,” Charlotte admitted years later.
“That was amazing at the start, as we were always teaching each other new things. Then we were just too different. Different beliefs in everything.
“His world was alien to me. All that training. He’s so strict with what he eats, what time he goes to sleep. And my life was alien to him. I don’t think it [the split] was about arguing. I think one day we just thought, ‘What are we doing?'”
Nevertheless, when Gavin proposed, Charlotte was “overjoyed”. But when the rugby ace travelled to Norway for some filming a few weeks later, a switch was well and truly flicked.
Charlotte Church and husband Jonathan Powell got hitched in 2017(Image: Getty Images)
“It was amazing. I really was going to marry Gav and spend the rest of my life with him,” Charlotte recalled. “But then he came back from Norway, and he’d changed, and I’d had time to think. We had both had a change of heart – so we were both of the same mind.”
Despite the split, Charlotte and Gavin share an amicable bond, with both playing active roles in raising their now-teenage children. The two have since married other people, with Church tying the knot with Powell in 2017 before welcoming a daughter, Frida, in 2020. Henson, meanwhile, married long-term partner Katie Mould in 2019.
