Ruby Wax is back to entertaining viewers on television with her recent stint on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! – but the journalist is no stranger to the spotlight. She starred in the ’80s sitcom Girls On Top, became a published author, and made audiences laugh as a comedienne. But over the years, the star has largely kept her private life just that – private.
The actress has been married to her third husband, TV producer Ed Bye, since 1988 and shares three children with him: son Max and daughters Marina and Maddy. While the couple are still together – and appear to be happily so – Ruby was once forced to defend her long-lasting marriage.
Ruby and Ed’s marriage was put under a magnifying glass in 2011 over reports Ruby had an affair. The couple had been married for more than 20 years at the time and had already welcomed all three of their children. But in a later interview, the actress shut down the reports, claiming the allegations had come from a nanny.
© Getty Images, Dave M. Benett/Getty ImagesRuby Wax and Ed Bye pictured in 2012.
“Don’t believe any of those stories about our marriage break-up. Ed and I are very much together – it’s just that we had a nanny who turned out to be insane,” she told The Standard. Ruby continued: “I’d had years of great nannies. But, sometimes, people are jealous; I don’t know why. Anyway, when I fired this girl, she was really inflamed. But she never went around saying we had rows at home because we hardly ever do.
“What she claimed was that I’d had an affair. However baseless the accusation, you can only imagine the tension it produced with Ed and me. She invented the whole thing. But that’s all in the past now, and Ed and I are stronger for it.”
Ruby and Ed have been together for decades
It’s been more than a decade since the allegations and Ed and Ruby are still going strong after 37 years of marriage. The couple first met when Ed worked as a director on Ruby’s show, Girls On Top. Ed opened up about their relationship in an interview with The Independent in 1993.
He said: “There are highs and lows in our relationship – there are bound to be – but there is never a dull moment. Life with Ruby is very entertaining. I respect her more than I would anyone else, which keeps us going at all times.
Ruby opened up about the secret to their long-lasting marriage in a 2021 interview, calling their relationship “unconventional”. She told The Sun’s Fabulous magazine: “I have my friends, he has his friends. I don’t assume we have the same tastes. It’s understood we both have different careers. We’re together but we have different tastes and jobs – and that’s OK. We don’t step on each other’s toes and I don’t really see myself as Mrs Bye.”
