Kate Garraway says she is not there yet on love again

Kate Garraway said she is not ready to find love again after Derek Draper’s death, drawing a clear line between wanting love in future and not feeling prepared now. The Good Morning Britain host said, “But, no, I’m not there yet.”

Her comments come after she had already said she would not want to spend the rest of her life without romantic love. That leaves her describing a future she has not ruled out, while saying the moment for it has not arrived.

Derek Draper and Garraway

Garraway had been married to Draper for 18 years when he died in 2024, aged 56, weeks after experiencing a cardiac arrest. He had been hospitalised for more than a year after his coronavirus battle in 2020, and later required round-the-clock care after returning home to Garraway and their two children, Darcey and Billy.

After his death, she wrote: “Rest gently and peacefully now Derek, my love, I was so lucky to have you in my life,” a line that placed her latest remarks in the context of a long period of illness and loss.

Hello! magazine in February 2025

In February 2025, Garraway said in an interview with Hello! magazine that Draper would want her to embrace life fully. She said, “Derek would want me to be grabbing life, because you learn how fast, and how easily, it can be snatched away,” and added, “I know he’d be saying, ‘You’ve got to get out and live, because I can’t’.”

Several months later, she told The Sun that rumours about her romantic life had “made me think about it”. When asked about romance again, she said, “And honestly, I don’t feel as if I can,” and added that thinking about being with anyone else felt “preposterous at the moment.”

Jamie Laing podcast remarks

Garraway also told Jamie Laing on the Great Company podcast that broadening her social circle was on her to-do list and that she wanted a social life that “isn’t based on being a mummy”. She said, “There’s no point in worrying about it – it will happen organically when I am ready,” before adding, “Well I wouldn’t like to think that I’d never had romantic love in my life again. I think that would be rather a sad way to go through life wouldn’t it?”

Her latest answer settles the immediate question: she is not closing the door on love, but she is not looking for it now. For readers following her personal update, that means the current position is patience rather than pursuit.