He’s best known firstly for making us laugh on the radio, and while we also know him from Big Brother and brief career in AFL, Ryan ‘Fitzy’ Fitzgerald is also a dedicated husband and father.
WATCH BELOW: The Fitzy & Wippa Married At First Sight Dinner Party
Fitzy’s been married to his wife Belinda – also known as BJ – for more than a decade now, with the pair celebrating their 14th wedding anniversary on March 15.
What started with a novelty wedding at Adelaide Oval has grown into a Sydney-based family life with two sons and a dog in tow.
We’re looking back at their sweet love story, and how they became the tight-knit couple they are today.
Fitzy first met Belinda in Adelaide quite some time ago now, and he claims she knew she was the one straight off the bat.
“She’s just a beautiful girl, inside and out,” he told 9Honey in 2022.
“Her smile, her eyes … yeah, she basically sucked me in straight away.”
However, she had a boyfriend at the time, and Fitzy and Belinda wouldn’t cross paths again for another two years.
Speaking about their first kiss on his radio show, Fitzy and Wippa, Fitzy revealed that he ‘faked an injury’ to entice Belinda to smooch him for the very first time.
He was sitting on her bed at the time and had fallen off and hurt his back.
“She goes, ‘are you alright?’,” Fitzy recalled during the segment, which was all about first kisses.
“I said, ‘all I’ve wanted to do was to kiss you for so long’. And that’s how it started, I faked an injury,” he laughed.
The pair tied the knot in 2008 at Adelaide Oval, where he formerly played AFL with the Adelaide Crows.
“I promise to love you through good times and bad, with all I have to give and all I feel inside, in the only way I know how; completely and forever,” he promised in his vows.
Their reception was then hosted by famous radio comedians Merrick Watts and Tom Ross, of ‘Merrick and Rosso’ fame.
Fitzy also donned a pair of thongs for the bridal waltz, in classic ‘Aussie wedding’ fashion.
However, tragedy struck early on in their marriage when they unfortunately suffered a stillbirth, something Fitzy only began to open up about in later years.
The experience challenged him, given the no-nonsense household he was raised in, followed by his career in men’s sport, which saw him approach emotion with refrain.
“We lost a child, it was pretty full on,” he told the Balls Deep podcast in 2018.
“I came from a family that’s like, you know what, you get dealt a bad blow and you move on. But she came from a family that was quite emotional,” he said of himself and Belinda.
“So, I had to tend to her needs and work that out. But that brought us closer together than ever before, and it made us even stronger,” he revealed.
Their daughter, Cayley-Jay, was born without breath at around five months gestation, and Belinda gave birth to her naturally so that the couple could meet her and say goodbye.
“She delivered the baby and she decided to [hold Cayley-Jay], and it was the best thing we ever did,” Fitzy said, after originally not wanting to see the baby.
“We had closure. We got to say hello and then we got to say goodbye to Cayley-Jay. It was a beautiful moment, it really was.”
The couple now have two sons together – Hewston and Lenny.
“There was a moment where [Cayley-Jay’s death] was the end of the world,” Fitzy revealed to Sunday Style in 2015.
“But when we had our first child, Hewston, we had to think how lucky we were to have one.”
In fact, Hewston is now a high school student, having begun Year Seven in 2022.
Fitzy and Belinda gifted him a card with a long message, with Fitzy taking a video for Instagram of Hewston opening it up and refusing to read it as tears welled up in his eyes.
“All it is, is we just want to say how proud we are of you and we love you so much buddy,” Fitzy can be heard saying behind the camera.
“We just wanted to articulate to him what he means to us, we probably don’t do it enough,” Fitzy wrote in the caption.
“This year more than ever with kids going back to school, make sure you let them know how tough they’ve been surviving the past couple of years homeschooling with Mum and Dad.
“Love him, our best mate ❤️,” he shared.
Belinda also posted a selfie of herself and Hewston sharing equally toothy grins to commemorate the big day.
“No tears here … just lots of love ❤️ proud of my boy,” she wrote.
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