Ronan Keating admitted to an affair with Boyzone backing dancer Francine Cornell in an interview with Piers Morgan. He had the affair while he was married to his first wife Yvonne Connolly – but only came clean when he was backed into a corner
Ronan Keating has been married to his wife Storm since 2015 – but his first marriage didn’t run smoothly. He tied the knot with first wife Yvonne Connolly in 1998, but after 12 years of marriage and three children together, she discovered he was cheating.
It was 2010 when Yvonne felt a change in their relationship, suspecting something wasn’t quite right. As Yvonne, 46, was preparing for the family’s home move, she stumbled upon something while packing.
Her worst fears were confirmed when she got hold of Ronan’s phone bills and discovered he’d made calls to an unfamiliar number. Yvonne dialled the mystery digits and after listening to the answering machine, realised that it belonged to Francine Cornell. Back then, Francine was 26 and a Boyzone backing dancer who had reportedly been secretly involved with Ronan for seven months.
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“She knew something was going on and she got hold of his phone records and called my number,” Francine is said to have told to The Sun. “From my voicemail she got my name – that’s how she found out. Ronan tried to deny it all at first. He said I was a dancer from the tour and we were just good friends.”
Yvonne isn’t said to have been convinced though and called Francine directly. According to Francine, their affair was not just physical as she had fallen for Ronan, and he reportedly professed his love for her, too.
But just days later, he’s said to have ended things with Francine in order to reunite with Yvonne, telling her in a phone call that they could never speak again. So it came as a shock when, a month on, Yvonne invited Francine to a hotel in London.
“I just needed answers. I just needed the truth, and I needed to make sure stories collaborated,” Yvonne is quoted as having said on Brendan O’Connor’s Cutting Edge. “It was very hard to figure out who you can trust. So this was the answer to it. I was going to meet this girl, a quick 20-minute conversation, and we’d be done and dusted.
“And in fairness to her, she came and met me. But the 20-minute conversation turned into a couple of bottles of wine. After a few hours I realised she needed it as much as I did and I know it sounds very dramatic, but she was as much as a victim as I was. I think we both got something from it.
“When I look back, this is what it all boils down to: it was basically two girls in love with the same boy who over a five-hour conversation realised that that boy was not who we thought he was.”
The situation reportedly then took an unexpected turn when police arrived at the hotel after Francine’s mother made a concerned call – though Yvonne initially mistook them for strippers.
The ex-model added: “There was a knock on the door and I looked out through the peephole and I saw people dressed as policemen. I said to them, ‘Tell me you’re strippers’, to which I was told, ‘No we’re the Metropolitan Police and we’ve come to investigate the whereabouts of this girl.'”. She added: “To this day, it’s like that happened to somebody else, I just think it’s the funniest story.”
The Keatings did relocate into their planned new abode and spent the following year attempting to mend their relationship. Ronan is said to have utilised the sleeve notes of his 2010 solo album Duet as an to “apologise” to his wife, who he married in 1998 when they were both aged 21.
“You are the most incredible, inspirational woman I have ever met,” he stated. “For the mistakes I have made in my life, I am sorry. Guess you have to go there to come back. It was a dark place and you were the light to bring me back. I love you.”
Regrettably, the couple couldn’t save the relationship and confirmed their separation in April 2012. Yvonne has since moved on with cinematographer John Conroy, while Ronan embarked on a relationship with TV producer Storm Uechtritz, whom he met on The X Factor Australia.
The couple got married in 2015 in a Scottish ceremony, and have since welcomed son Cooper, seven, and daughter Coco, four.
Regarding the affair from his first marriage, the Irish singer seemed repentant in 2016, with the Daily Telegraph reporting him as saying: “Nobody should have an affair. If you’re man enough to have the balls to go home and say, ‘Sorry, this isn’t working anymore,’ that’s the ideal situation, isn’t it? But we’re weak. We don’t do that. So yes, I hurt people and I am sorry for that hurt, but the outcome is I found Storm and I’m very grateful. But I’m saying sorry.”
He reportedly later took to Facebook, insisting that he had no regrets about his divorce because ‘it’s what [he] wanted’. “There is a lot more to it than an affair and obviously it was broken well before then,” he posted. “Over the years I have kept my mouth shut and taken all the blame for the sake of my kids & my ex wife. But enough now. After 6yrs I draw the line.”
He continued: “There is a lot more to my situation than people will ever know and that’s the way it should be. But there are always two people in a relationship and if it’s not working there’s more than one good reason for it.
“I will not stand for complete misrepresentation of my truth and my heart anymore. I’ve done that for way too many years and too long in the tooth for it. Please respect that everyone has moved on and better off. Not once did I say I was apologising to my ex wife or saying sorry for the affair. I said I was sorry for all the hurt it had caused, to which I truly am.”
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Source: Mirror
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