Former The One Show presenter and Strictly star Anita Rani has reportedly split from her businessman husband, Bhupi Rehal, after 14 years of marriage.
Anita, 45, who also regularly presents BBC’s Countryfile and hosts BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour, is said to have amicably “drifted apart” from her husband after their busy work schedules kept them apart.
“It’s really sad but they’ve decided to separate,” a source told the Mirror. “Their hectic schedules over the past couple of years have sadly meant they’ve drifted apart over time.
Anita Rani ‘splits’ from husband?
“They remain on very good terms and wish nothing but the best for one another.”
The pair reportedly met at a rave in East London and tied the knot in a traditional three-day Sikh ceremony in 2009.
They remain on very good terms and wish nothing but the best for one another.
While Anita once insisted to The Times in 2021 that her marriage to Bhupi was ”great”, adding that “it’s like any marriage: you have to work at it,”, she hinted that she had felt pressured to marry by her parents.
Anita’s more liberal approach to dating and marriage seemed to provoke a whirlwind of emotional turmoil for her as she struggled to break free of her family’s expectations.
“Fulfilling her dharma, her duty. That’s the moment they [parents] wait for. As though bringing up a daughter is an act of danger and trepidation, a great, heavy joyless burden, until you can finally say she belongs to someone else,” she wrote in her memoir, The Right Sort of Girl, according to the MailOnline.
Doomed from the start?
The Strictly Come Dancing star went on to vehemently criticise arranged marriages in her family and culture, which happened up until her. She referred to aunts in the culture as the “illuminaunties” who she said would ”find suitable matches” for girls while their husbands were “free to do what they wanted”.
Speaking candidly about her wedding day in her memoir, Anita said that she felt ”anything but calm”, adding: “This was not how I planned life to be. I am 32 but I wasn’t supposed to be getting married yet and, when I did get married, I wasn’t going to have a big, elaborate, traditional Indian wedding.
”It was actually my husband who said to tell you, the reader, the truth. To not pretend I was skipping around with white doves floating around me and a sitar playing sweet music. That I felt like I was making a mistake.”
The star, who does not share any children with Bhupi, also opened up about her devastating miscarriage in 2018, speaking to The Times.
“I’m much better at self-care and I ask myself more questions about how I want to live my life,” she said. “I’m also more willing to be vulnerable, like talking about the miscarriage I had in 2018.
“Vulnerability used to scare the [bleep] out of me, but it has been liberating to share my personal story and see the response.”
Entertainment Daily! contacted reps for Anita Rani for comment.
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