LOVE rat Richard Keys wed his daughter’s best friend on Saturday – after leaving his wife for her.
The ex-Sky Sports presenter married lawyer Lucie Rose, 30 years younger than him, on a country estate.
Dressed in a Hugo Boss cream linen suit, Richard, 66, boarded the Dartmouth Ferry to the wedding ceremony in Brixham, Devon, after staying at the four-star Dart Marina Hotel on Friday night.
Speaking to The Sun ahead of the nuptials, he said: “I’m a very lucky man, although feeling a bit nervous.
“We’re heading off to Canada for our honeymoon which is a bit different.
“Then it’s back to work for both of us in August and the start of the football season for me.
“People think I might be a bit long in the tooth now but I don’t care.”
A source told The Sun: “Richard and Lucie tried to keep the wedding as low-key as possible so decided to have it on a private estate.”
In the days leading up to the wedding, Richard and Lucie, 35, were spotted on social media wining and dining at the five-star Mandrake Hotel in West London.
The couple sent out “save the dates” in April to their guests on £45 bottles of personalised Veuve Clicquot champagne with “formal invitation to follow”.
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They first met when Richard moved to the Middle East to work for broadcaster beIN Sports with his long-time pal Andy Gray.
Lucie, who was best pals with his daughter Jemma, became embroiled in a secret fling with the presenter.
Cheated wife Julia told The Sun that the affair in 2016 which brought their 36-year marriage crashing down had left their family “devastated”.
Now the Daily Mail says that a source close to Julia has revealed that she was unaware of the wedding until she received a text from Richard just two hours before Lucie walked the aisle.
Julia told them: “What can I say – I’m in a new relationship now and I’ve put Richard and our marriage behind me now.
“I wish him and Lucie all the best. If that’s what makes him happy then I’m happy for him but as for me it’s all in the past now. I’m in a new relationship and I’m really happy and that’s all I want to focus on.
“It looks as if he is happy as well from the photographs so all the best to them. As I say anything to do with Richard and our marriage is in the past so I wish them well.”
She had previously said: “He met Jemma’s friend Lucie, who was working in Doha, and the lies began. He claimed she and her friends thought of him as their ‘Doha Dad’.
Julia explained how it began after they moved to Qatar.
She said: “I remember at Richard’s birthday party — and I haven’t told anyone this before — just as I was leaving, Lucie grabbed my arm and said: “Are you leaving now, Julia?” She was so insistent, and I thought it was odd — then Richard was ages coming home.
“When I questioned him, he’d said Lucie needed to talk to him as she had a problem.
“I don’t feel bitter towards Lucie, but deeply disappointed that she could devastate our family like this.”
At the time Richard denied he had left her for Lucie.
He also later denied claims that he walked away from his wife while she was battling thyroid cancer.
He told The Athletic: “I’ll mention the unmentionable for you. Did I leave my wife fighting cancer? No. I don’t know what happened.
“I don’t know why our marriage ended the way it did, but my wife was fighting cancer for seven years before I left her and she had been in remission for seven years.
“I know how hard it was for her when things went wrong. I wasn’t going to start engaging in a tit-for-tat, he-said, she-said, respond to everything that was said about me.
“If people believe that I walked away with my wife fighting cancer with a friend of my daughter’s, I can’t change that now. Tell a lie twice and it becomes the truth. Tell it on social media and it haunts you forever.”
Sun Sport understands that his daughter Jemma was not in attendance for the bash, which lasted two days with a pool party on the Sunday.
The party guests were Lucie’s close friends and family, while there were none of his friends or celebrity pals in attendance.
They couple hired a local band and Australian pianist Greg Agar to play at the wedding.
His daughter, former Hollyoaks actress Jemma Keys, opened up over the abusive text messages she sent to her best friend after discovering she had slept with her dad.
Back in 2018 she revealed the betrayal she felt when the affair was discovered and her battle with alcoholism.
Jemma said she was in a state of “alcoholic blackout” when she sent the messages to Lucie Rose, including one that said: “You’re the filthiest sl** I can ever think of.”
Jemma revealed: “All I can say is that it was 18 months down the line from finding out about the affair – which was the most awful betrayal – and I’d hit the lowest, darkest point of my addiction.
“Of course, I can’t justify what I did. But I felt like my father had been stolen from me, and the affair genuinely has destroyed my family and my relationship with Dad.
“He had been my idol all of my life and, although I still love him, I don’t know who he is any more. I have nothing to say to him.”
Jemma said she and her mum found out about the affair while the family was on holiday. That then, she said, led to a two-year nightmare including being arrested for the abusive texts.
At the time of sending the late-night messages she said she was drinking three bottles of wine a day from 8am.
The charges for harassment were later dropped and Jemma said that she was trying to deal with her alcohol addiction and had been in rehab as she outlined her determination to remain sober.
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Keys was sacked in disgrace from his £500,000-a-year job fronting Sky’s Premier League coverage in 2011 after making disparaging remarks about female referee Sian Massey-Ellis.
He is now the face of the BeIN Sports channels which broadcast all 365 Premier League games per season mainly on its flagship “Super Saturday” programme.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
