David Campbell has revealed couples therapy saved his relationship with wife Lisa in the early days of their romance, and said they would never have met if it weren’t for their matchmaker Magda Szubanski.
WATCH David Campbell sings with his children
The Today Extra host and Lisa, a theatre producers, opened up to Cameron and Ali Daddo on their Separate Bathrooms podcast about the gritty side to their 13-year marriage.
David and Lisa, who share son Leo, 10 and twins Billy and Betty, five, revealed they were introduced through Kath and Kim star Magda Szubanski when Lisa was working as a theatre actress.
“I was over in Australia with a touring play. We did six weeks in Sydney and six weeks in Melbourne and the people in my cast were obsessed with Kath and Kim,” she said.
“Magda was in a musical in Melbourne at the time, my friends and I went to see the show Magda was in and we muscled our way back stage and we became friends.”
Lisa was then invited to have some drinks in a dressing room, which turned out to be David’s!
“And [David] offered me a beer and I said ‘yes’ and then from that moment we haven’t really been apart,” she explained.
“There was a moment where we thought ‘OK, well I have to go back to the UK’ and he obviously lived here and then Magda was really instrumental in ensuring that we maintain our relationship and said that ‘this doesn’t happen all the time’.”
After playing cupid to the couple, Magda also had a large role in their 2008 wedding as one of Lisa’s bridesmaids!
In the early stages of their whirlwind romance, the couple started seeing a relationship counselor to learn how to deal with arguments.
“Just because it was a lot of pressure. I mean, I wasn’t really emotionally ready for being in ‘The One’ relationship and Lisa had come over to Australia and went ‘here’s everything – this is IT now’,” David said.
“And so just to sort of get through that, we went to couples therapy in the first year and that was really invaluable because it taught us how to argue.”
David admitted he and Lisa had “the biggest barnies” and said couples therapy saved their relationship.
“And at the end, this therapist was like ‘Well I think you guys have done really well, so thank you for coming in etc.’ and I was like ‘I don’t think I’m done! So if she (Lisa) can go, I’ll just stay’ on and I kept going to therapy on my own,” he said.
David, who is the son of iconic musician Jimmy Barnes, said fatherhood has changed him “immensely” and credits his kids for “realigning his moral structure”.
“It’s made me so hyperaware of being present in their lives and hyperaware of my behaviour and what you put out the world,” he said.
“But it really just went like ‘Oh no, you actually have to put out good things to make the world a better place for the people that you’ve put into the world. And then model that behaviour for them.”
When asked by Cameron how they’ve been handling homeschooling during Sydney’s current lockdown, the couple said they’ve struck a good balance of roles.
“I’m casting Moulin Rouge (in Japan), that is all via video in the afternoons. I do the children up until 12/12:30pm and then David comes home and takes over for a couple of hours,” Lisa said.
The father-of-three takes over from Lisa when he wraps up filming for Today Extra in the early afternoon.
“I pick up lunch time/around lunch and have the afternoon shift, that usually involves making sure those crashes don’t happen in the afternoon,” he said.
“It’s maths and reading. I make sure they do extra maths, or whatever puzzle you had to do,” he said.
Lisa laughed that their kids are becoming a chip off the old block of her and David, and already have the gift of the gab.
“Betty’s just an eternal show-off, in the most beautiful way. She’s incredibly entertaining! She’s very, very funny. I’ve never met anybody who cares less what you think of her,” she said.
“It’s hard to parent, but it will make a really good performer because there’s no self-consciousness there at all.”
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