Emmerdale star Jeff Hordley's marriage to co-star after 'frightening' illness
Emmerdale actor Jeff Hordley is up for Best Dramatic Performance at the British Soap Awards tonight for his role as bad boy Cain Dingle.
Since joining the show in 2000, Cain has had a complicated and chaotic love life with a string of romances, affairs, pregnancies, and even incest. But off-screen, things couldn't be more different.
The 53-year-old from Crumpsall, Manchester, is married to his co-star Zoe Henry who plays Rhona Goskirk on the show. She first joined in 2001 but became a regular fixture in the Dales when she reprised her character eight years later.
The pair met back in 1994 while attending drama school, and have been together for 29 years.
Zoe Henry and Jeff Hordley have been together since 1994 (ITV/REX/Shutterstock)Speaking to LeedsLive last year, Zoe, 49, recalled: "We got together at drama school. We got together in 1994."
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While Jeff told the publication it was love at first sight.
"I saw Zoe and realised she was the girl for me," he added.
The couple got engaged in 2002 - on the same day that Zoe won best actress in a leading role at the Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards, for her performance as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion.
Zoe and Jeff tied the knot in 2003 in a low-key ceremony at the medieval Hedingham Castle, near Sudbury in East Anglia.
They went on to celebrate at the Swan Hotel in Lavenham, with a party that included several other members of the Emmerdale cast, including Emma Atkins who plays Charity Tate and Charley Webb who played Jeff's on-screen daughter, Debbie.
The actor has a complicated love life on the soap - but his real life is very differentSpeaking about working with her husband, Zoe previously shared how they support each other through difficult storylines on Emmerdale.
"It's important to have a laugh in-between takes so upsetting stories don't get you down too much", she told The Sun.
"Working on the same show as Jeff also helps because if one of us is having a bad day then the other will completely understand."
The couple has shared several insights into their married life over the years, with Zoe proclaiming that Jeff "couldn't be less like a Dingle if he tried" during an appearance on ITV's Lorraine in 2022.
She went on to say how the pair both love gardening and have been growing their own fruit and vegetables at home for 15 years.
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Food is particularly important to them, as Jeff was diagnosed with Crohn's disease in his younger years and has previously been hospitalised by it.
In a column for The Mirror in 2015, he explained just how scary the condition, which causes the bowel to become inflamed, can be.
"Lying in a hospital bed being told I had Crohn's Disease was one of the most frightening experiences of my life.
"When I was just nine, my mum had died from the very same illness. My reaction was, 'Am I going to die too?'
"It was a week before my 26th birthday. I'd suffered stomach cramps and diarrhoea for six years but it had never crossed my mind there was a connection."
Doctors had to remove part of his bowel, leaving him with an "impressive scar".
Jeff was diagnosed with Crohn's disease in his younger years and was hospitalised twice (Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
The family has an allotment to grow their own fruit and veg (@ZoeHenry03/Twitter)At the time, he and Zoe had only been dating for 18 months and he recalls being worried about how she would react, but he claims she was "brilliant"
He ended up back in hospital in 2002 after collapsing at the West Yorkshire Playhouse while seeing Zoe perform. The Crohn's had relapsed, affecting scar tissue from his initial surgery.
Doctors wanted to put him on immunosuppressive drugs to keep the Crohn's under control, but the couple were thinking of starting a family and didn't want this to impact their chances, so turned to homeopathic medicine instead and decided to change their diet and lifestyle.
He told The Mirror: "A nutritionist put me on a strict detox diet for two months – no alcohol, sugar, meat, wheat or dairy.
"It was tough but it worked. Zoe and I stopped eating processed foods, got an allotment, and cooked everything from scratch."
Because of these health concerns, the pair are still understandably very "mindful of what they eat".
"We have an allotment and it's so therapeutic to have your hands in the earth. Watching our diet isn't about being on TV, it's more about general well-being," Zoe recently told The Sun.
They tied the knot in 2003 (Getty Images)
They have two kids, Violet and Stan (Getty Images)The couple are parents to two children, a daughter named Violet who was born in 2005, and a son called Stan who was born in 2008.
The family lives in the Yorkshire Dales in a gorgeous cottage with their two dogs.
Jeff once said that he and Zoe don't film at the same time so they are able to share childcare and they will likely 'never' share a storyline because of this.
The pair do run lines together but take turns to take on "the weight of what's going on at home", depending on who is particularly busy at work.
The parents love spending time with their kids as much as possible, with Zoe sharing how they all like to cook together.
"The kids love cooking with us. The other night Violet made a dahl from scratch," she told Fabulous, adding that she and her husband make a lot of soup.
The mum went on to share with the publication that she "runs a tight ship" at home, getting up early to work out before getting organised making the beds, packing lunches for the kids, and emptying the dishwasher before work.
Similarly, of an evening the family has a busy routine, with Zoe confessing she's in "awe" of people who are able to watch box sets as she spends her evening cooking, eating, and catching up with her family, before helping with homework, tidying up and going to bed at 9pm.
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