When I was working for Hello magazine, I often had the chance to hear how couples meet and fallin love. So covering engagements was one of my favourite jobs. Olympic champion Amy Williams had a particularly modern day fairytale romance. She met her handsome solider husband on the online dating app Tinder, while she was on a train passing through the area at which he was stationed. A couple of weeks after they met, they were already in love and planning their future.
It may come as no surprise that Olympic gold champion Amy Williams likes to get things done fast. After all in the Vancouver Winter Games in 2010, she smashed track records in the skeleton bob by hurtling down the ice on a sled at nearly 90mph. But the speed of meeting a new man, falling in love and saying yes to marriage all in the space of 12 weeks has surprised even her.
Especially as the day before the 31-year-old former athlete met handsome soldier Craig Ham, she had virtually given up on finding love.
“I was in a coffee shop in Bath with my friend Rose and was a bit emotional,” Amy says. “I had reached the conclusion that I was just going to be happy on my own, and was planning to buy a dog. I thought if I do meet someone, fine. But I was quite prepared to give my time to family and friends. I thought, ‘I’m done.’ And then Craig came along.”
Until 8 March, Amy had no inkling that 75 miles away in Berkshire, 35-year-old Craig, a staff sergeant with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) was feeling much the same as her.
When she won her gold medal in 2010, Amy was in a relationship with Petr Narovec, a member of the Slovakian four-man bobsleigh team, but it hadn’t worked out. “Both of us had been single for a long time and in relationships with others that were potential husband and wife material,” she says. “But for various reasons they had ended. So we both knew what we wanted. The last serious relationship for me was about three years ago.
“Dating at our age is so hard, especially when lots of your friends are married with children. For me, Bath is such a small city, everyone knows everyone. So you don’t meet new people.”
However, there was a modern twist of fate in this fairytale romance, as Amy reveals to HELLO! as she and Craig celebrate their engagement with their first photoshoot together at the palatial Lucknam Park Hotel and Spa near Bath.
One night, on a train ride home from London to Bath, to quell the boredom Amy decided to try the online dating app Tinder, which uses GPS to find your location then shows potential matches near you. “Because the train happened to be going through Berkshire, I saw Craig’s picture on my phone and thought, ‘Ah, nice!’ If you both like each other’s pictures, you can start chatting on line, which is what we did.
“But if I’d been at home in Bath, the app would never have found his location. So literally… it’s meant to be,” says Amy, cuddling up to the 6ft 4in soldier.
ROMANCE IN THE CAR PARK
Cautious about being recognised, Amy had posted an online photo of herself wearing a baseball cap, with only half her face showing.
“But I knew who it was straight away,” says Craig, who had been watching her commentating for the BBC at the Winter Olympics at Sochi.
“However, it might have been a fake profile of someone sitting behind a computer screen. So I wasn’t sure.”
He asked Amy for a date and the next day travelled to Bath to meet her for lunch. “I’d chosen a nice bar to meet where we could sit on a sofa and chat,” says Amy. But instead, the magical moment when they first set eyes on each other happened by a pay-and-display sign in a car park.
Says Craig: “I didn’t realise you needed change for car parks in Bath, and I didn’t have any cash on me. So I was already 15 minutes late.”
Amy called him to find out why. “And I thought, ‘I am going to have to change my £10 note for coins to put money in for this guy who I don’t even know,’” she smiles.
But almost at once both knew that this was something special.
“Our first date lasted for eight hours. He wanted to take me for dinner,” says Amy – and Craig adds: “Well that was the least I could do after she’d paid for my parking.”
Amy continues: “But I had a girls’ night out planned, and I was not ditching my girls.”
In the following days, Amy, who is vice president of British Skeleton, her sport ’s UK governing body, had events to attend in London.
And Craig went along with her. “I was also looking after my two-year-old niece Chloe for the weekend,” says Amy, who has a married twin sister, Ruth, and brother Simon, 33, who is also married with two children.
“So in the first fortnight he met everybody in my life. My friends and my family, including my parents on a black-tie double dinner date.
“I swear, we felt we had known each other forever. I really believe in soulmates, and instantly, it was like… I know this guy. It’s as if he has always been there.
“I don’t know if it was love at first sight, because I’m thinking, ‘Okay, don’t fall head over heels.’ But it didn’t even need to be like that. Because it was like… oh wow, this is the guy I have always been looking for and hoping and planning to meet.”
As for Craig: “At first I didn’t know what to expect because of Amy’s job and being in the spotlight,” he says. “But I soon realised she is really down to earth and has a heart of gold. And we really clicked.”
Within a fortnight they were already discussing their future together. Says Amy: “I’m not someone who makes such quick decisions when it comes to relationships. But I go by my gut instinct. I have lived my life from this feeling, whether it is competing, or jobs. I have always been able to suss people out.”
Being together felt so right as they talked about their hopes and dreams. “Sometimes we were like, ‘Are we being stupid, is this too soon?’ And then we’d say no,” Amy says. “You can spend your whole life thinking there is someone better out there who has another tick box, but I don’t feel like that.”
PLANNING AHEAD
Naturally, most parents might be hesitant about the speed of their daughter’s romance. And Amy’s father Ian, a professor of chemistry at the University of Bath, and mother Jan, a former midwife, were no exception.
“But once they spent time with Craig and saw us together, it was, ‘Yes, this is so right,’” Amy says. “And everyone can see how happy we are.”
It was a while before Amy was to see her new man, who has served in the army for 15 years, in full uniform. His family – mother Stephanie, stepfather Carl and sister Claire – live in Staffordshire, while his dad, Paul, lives in Wales, and he moves around where his job dictates.
Amy says: “Our first date was in civvies, but when I went onto base to meet him, he picked me up in his uniform. He was hot!
“He is very handsome, but the realisation also hit me, ‘Oh he’s in the army.’ I am really proud of him, of all our military and what they do.”
She is also very aware that being married to a member of the armed forces will mean long periods apart – a prospect that doesn’t daunt her.
“I’ve spent the last ten years competing, of which six months every year I was living out of a suitcase away from family and friends. You get used to being apart and excited about seeing each other again. I love those airport moments. I am so old-fashioned that I’ll make sure I write him proper letters.”
The couple have already started to plan their wedding next August. Craig will be in his “No. 1s” – dark blue ceremonial uniform – Chloe will be a flower girl, and Amy’s close friend, GB skeleton bob team member Rose McGrandle, will be a bridesmaid.
Amy is excited about the prospect of walking through an arch of swords immediately after the ceremony, having already chosen the venue – the small church in her hometown of Bathampton where her sister was married.
“We did everything back to front. We booked the church, a venue for the reception, Craig asked my dad’s permission, we designed and bought the engagement ring and then he proposed,” she says, showing us her ring, a 1.5 carat diamond set on split diamond shoulders.
Amy felt sure that her boyfriend would pop the question on a safari holiday in Botswana in June. “But I played a trick on her, saying I wouldn’t be taking the ring because it might get lost or stolen,” says Craig. On Friday 13 June, along with friends Rob Barber and girlfriend Charlotte, he whisked Amy off to Victoria Falls. “I’d planned for a full moon with a lunar rainbow,” he says. “I didn’t plan for the clouds, but the thought was there.”
But for Amy the evening was magical. “The moonlight hits the spray from the waterfall, so there were little rainbows. It was so gorgeous.”
Did she have a clue it was about to happen? “He was acting suspiciously. But then he told me that the Victoria Falls was one of the natural wonders of the world and that I was the eighth, and got down on one knee. I said, ‘What did you say? Say it again.’ So he did, and that’s when I cried.”
The couple will move into Amy’s three-bedroom Georgian townhouse in Bath. She is excited about the prospect of changing her passport to Mrs Ham and laughs as she adds: “And if we have babies they will be piglets. I can’t wait to have kids, perhaps in a few years when the time is right. I’m a twin, and so is my mum, so it might even be twins, although I’d like one at a time if possible.”
Meanwhile, Amy – who retired from her sport in May 2012 after admitting her “body could take no more”– is concentrating on her new career as a TV presenter on Channel 5’s The Gadget Show, on which she checks out new consumer technology. She first appears on air in the autumn.
Her Olympic success had made her Britain’s star performer at Vancouver and her achievement was marked with the award of an MBE. She is a British Olympic Association ambassador, which has meant coming across the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at Olympic events. This year she was in the Royal Box at Wimbledon and also met David Beckham. But the next chapter of her life is with Craig. And as she wanders around the hotel grounds hand in hand with the man she’s been searching for, her future looks golden.
“I can’t explain this sense of peace and ease of being in each other’s company,” Amy says. “I have never been more happy or content.”