Star ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson has revealed why she and her husband are keeping their relationship private.
During an interview for ‘The ABC Of’, Ferguson told host David Wenham that she and her partner, Tony Jones, met while working in Paris.
Jones, best known as the former host of Q&A, worked as London correspondent for the ABC when he hired Ferguson to help him with a story on French politics in 1992.
The chance meeting was not only the start of Ferguson’s stellar career, but also the start of a romantic relationship that led to marriage and three children.
Looking back on the images of Jones from 1992, Ms Ferguson said: ‘That’s the man I fell in love with.
“I spent my entire career by not saying such things publicly and keeping our careers completely separate.
“But that’s definitely the guy I kind of fell in love with at that moment.”
Sarah Ferguson (right) and Tony Jones (left) married in 1993 but have kept their relationship private to keep their ‘careers completely separate’
She joked, “I broke the rules of my entire professional life at that moment. I feel like the ground is cracking beneath me.”
Ferguson admitted that she initially didn’t expect to get along with Jones after trying to organize their play together in the days before they met.
“I didn’t like him at all,” she said.
‘We spent a week on the phone putting together our first story and I found him quite annoying. He kept changing the story.”
But everything changed the moment the couple met at the airport.
“He walked through the doors of the airport. They opened and that was that, and here we are,” Ferguson said.
The couple married a year after meeting and spent more than 30 years of marriage together pursuing jobs around the world.
The pair have often worked on projects together and when discussing how they resolve professional differences, Ferguson said: “UnFortunately, there is no court of appeal.’
“There are just quiet days that follow disagreements,” she said.
‘We can be quite fierce about politics… We are both journalists with deep hearts, we love what we do.
‘So it’s not something special, it’s just part of dinner.’
Ferguson also opened up about the difficulties she encountered in securing an interview with disgraced former Federal Court of Australia judge Marcus Einfeld, who she lived next door to at the time.
Ferguson (above) said she met her husband while covering French politics for the ABC in 1992
The veteran journalist said she convinced Einfeld to do an interview, but he backed out at the last minute.
“I call him all the time, and I hear my phone ringing in the house next door where he lives, and I hear him walking around and he doesn’t answer the phone,” she said.
“I hear him talking about me ringing the doorbell and him not answering the phone.”
The ordeal earned her the following advice for young reporters: “Never make a program about the neighbor.”