Media professional Trudy Kerr and her husband Adrian Attard make for a fun couple to interview. We ‘meet up’ online, at dinner-time, and there’s pasta, wine and banter – lots of it – as I fire away questions at them. Usually I’m not a fan of online interviews, but if I want to get this story I don’t have much choice. Adrian is general manager of the Corinthia Hotel in Prague, where Trudy is visiting.
The two currently share their time between Malta and the Czech Republic – the temporary arrangement may be unusual for some, but clearly the couple has lost none of the sparkly wit and relationship goals factor that attracted me to doing this interview in the first place. And, it turns out, this Googlemeets is just the thing to give me an unfiltered view of what their home life looks like.
Adrian and Trudy Kerr are one of those couples that, in a world turned cynical by swiping right, give love a good name without delivering death by sweetness. In short, they’re the perfect degree of Valentine’s Day feel-good. Turns out, their origin story is as entertaining as they are in everyday life.
“I’ve never chased a man in my life, but heavens above did he make me work.” Trudy’s opener is followed by Adrian’s loud guffaw and quick comeback.
“Hey, I didn’t suspect anything. I was new to this dating game.”
They describe their first meeting during an event at Corinthia Palace, where Adrian was general manager at the time.
“I went straight there from my XFM show and I was the first one to arrive. They were still setting up, so Adrian came up to me and introduce himself, being the good host and all.”
Adrian’s version, meantime, is that he was “horrified” that someone would turn up so early at an event. Later, while at the same table, the topic of social media and the pressures associated with it cropped up. Trudy Kerr pointed out how happy she was that she started working before the Internet was a thing. Another guest interrupted with a “surely you mean before Instagram?”.
“Adrian and I exchanged this look, while I explained that no, actually I did mean the Internet. I suppose that’s when we worked out that we were on the same wavelength.”
The realisation was enough to prompt Trudy to deliver a cheeky goodbye before leaving.
Trudy Kerr: ‘We kissed and my stomach flipped’
“I said: Mr Attard, If you don’t mind me saying, you make a suit look good. Then I turned on my heels and ran away.”
Ladies of the world, take note. If this line doesn’t work, nothing will. Sure enough, it did work although both agree that – being newly single – they took things slowly at first. But, with some additional machinations on Trudy’s part, they didn’t take too long to take off.
“I decided I needed to find some reasons to work with Corinthia, so we kept having these meetings that should’ve taken 15 minutes but somehow extended over two and a half hours,” Trudy says with a chuckle.
Adrian interjects: “I remember mentioning that I grew up in the UK and in Germany. I picked up that Trudy found this interesting, so I actually said that I had seen the fall of the Berlin wall. Let’s just say that this wasn’t quite accurate.”
Things proceeded in this fashion for a while, the one trying to impress the other, until finally a work coffee meeting at 8PM turned into dinner. Even then, Adrian wasn’t quite sure whether he was reading the signs well, until the spark between them became a bit too obvious to ignore.
“At the end of the evening, I was thinking – please, please don’t kiss me,” Trudy Kerr says somewhat paradoxically. “It’s just that he was so interesting and lovely that I didn’t want to risk it being awful.”
He didn’t, but a week later Trudy invited him to accompany her to the Rolex Middlesea Race opening party and their relationship finally jumped to the next step.
“We had so many mutual acquaintances and I loved the fact that he knew the same people I did. Then, we were walking away and he slipped his hand into mine. We went back to a restaurant close to my house in Għargħur and we stayed there until they closed the restaurant around us.”
And finally, in the tradition of all fairytales, Adrian walked Trudy home.
“We kissed and my stomach flipped. Fireworks went off and it was everything I had hoped for.”
The next chapter, however, didn’t quite follow the usual fairytale process. Put simply, it was titled COVID. Adrian describes how both of them stayed at the hotel, which was closed to the public.
“It was quite a surreal period, and in a way it didn’t quite feel like we were living together. There were like a 100 other people around us,” Adrian remembers. “It was less about living together and more about the practicalities of that time.In a way, it was a good time because we had each other. The whole process of COVID would’ve been a lot more difficult without that.”
This is evidently not the couple’s first go at love. Adrian describes how a relationship was the last thing on his mind when the two met, but how he’s learnt to trust his instincts in these matters.
“I believe there is no bad relationship. It’s like a book, there are chapters and stories. Where you are in your life at 45 is not the same as at 25. The conversation you’re after is different. The energy is different.”
Trudy follows it up with an: “It immediately felt right. It took me 45 years to unpick everything that kept leading me to wrong relationships. Once I did that, I was in a position to meet Aid. If we met earlier, I’m not entirely sure this would’ve worked. Today, my happiness doesn’t depend on him. I have to be happy by myself in order to be happy with someone else. If I rely on Aid to make me happy, my expectations of him are impossible.”
Wisdom comes with age indeed, and age has been kind to these two. Even long-distance can’t seem to quell their shine. The past year has seen them spend a significant amount of time apart, with Adrian’s move to Prague.
“The most we didn’t see each other was 21 days. That gives you a lot of time to think and to anticipate,” he reminisces. And one of the things he started thinking about was… a ring.
“I was in Malta and we had plans to meet up in London. We were chatting online and Adrian mentioned that he’d been shopping. I didn’t make much of this, until he added – I mean I went shopping for a ring. And then he pulls out a green bag, with an unmistakable logo.”
I can fully understand Trudy’s beaming smile, because the green background and logo she is referring to are… drumroll please…Tiffany’s. But this being an unconventional couple, the proposal was not the typically romantic one you’d expect.
“He proposed in Liverpool Street station, while waiting for the train to visit his family. We went to a dozen romantic spots while in London, but he chose the train station. Didn’t even go down on one knee, mind you – just turned towards me and popped the question,” she tells me.
Her reply? “Are you serious? Can I see the ring?”
And eventually, their wedding day arrived – a celebration with “no bridesmaid, no cake, no set pieces… we did away with all the rubbish of traditional celebration and kept it about Adrian and I”.
Trudy didn’t have anyone to give her away, so Adrian picked her up from Corinthia and they drove off to Castello Zammitello together. But not before taking a few photos at the same spot where they first met.
“Those are the only official photos of the wedding. It was a full circle. But we kept the ceremony small, to about 20 people, and we felt so uplifted by those around us.”
Our chat comes to an end with these beautiful words. I leave the couple to finish off their wine together with my faith in Valentine’s Day restored.
For more Sunday Circle features check out this piece about money hacks or these 5 quirky London bars.
