Inside Gary Lineker’s first marriage to sweetheart Michelle Cockayne, which noticed them hit by shock heartache and rumours of dishonest – as they reunite 19 years after painful cut up

After nearly 20 years apart, Gary Lineker was back by the side of his first wife Michelle Cockayne this week. 

The former couple, who met when he was an 18-year-old rising star for Leicester City and she was a 14-year-old schoolgirl, looked relaxed in each others’ company as they watched their second eldest son Harry wed his fiancée Annabelle in Ibiza.

It’s a happy scenario that neither might have envisaged ever happening at the height of their acrimonious divorce in 2006, which called time on a relationship that had spanned three decades and given the couple four sons: George, 34, Harry, 31, Tobias, 29, and Angus, 26. 

The ex Match Of The Day host, who presented his final BBC show in late May after being axed amid an antisemitism row, looked dapper in a beige linen suit that matched his sons’ attire as he sat beside the woman, equally glamorous in a striking blue maxi dress, that he was married to for 20 years.

During their own union, Gary and Michelle enjoyed huge highs, as the star poacher became one of the world’s top strikers – earning a pay packet to match, but also faced deep lows, including when the couple’s firstborn son, George, battled leukaemia at just eight weeks’ old and was given a heart-wrenching survival rate of just ’10 to 20 per cent’. 

By the early noughties though, they found themselves in the midst of a messy split, with Gary’s ‘unreasonable behaviour’ cited in the divorce proceedings – and Michelle fleeing the luxury Berkshire home they shared with their then young sons.

In April 2006, the high-profile separation reached the High Court, with Michelle telling District Judge Caroline Reid, who granted their decree nisi, that the former England star, then known as football’s ‘Mr Nice Guy’ – he never received a yellow or red card – had caused her ‘stress and anxiety’.

Gary didn’t contest the reasons listed by Michelle in the divorce papers and agreed to the arrangements for their four school-age sons and to pay costs.

Michelle was granted a ‘quickie’ divorce, with the couple’s two decades-long marriage dissolved in just 70 seconds. 

As with many professionals, the couple had been childhood sweethearts and married young; Gary, in his early twenties, had first asked Michelle out when she was 17.

The Leicester-born footballer, who played for Everton, Barcelona and Spurs and scored 48 goals for England, recalled how their love had blossomed later.

He said: ‘There wasn’t one particular moment when we suddenly became a couple but I do remember asking her out for our first proper date to a restaurant when she was 17 and it just went on from there.’

Gary added at the time: ‘I was probably keener on her then than she was on me and I’m probably keener now.’

The couple’s wedding day at St Mary’s Church in Knighton, Leicester saw them  mobbed by hundreds of fans wishing them well. 

Police had to force back a crowd of over 300, with Gary left blindsided at the outpouring of love from his home city, saying: ‘We were surprised so many turned up.’

Family was, Lineker once said, at the very centre of his life. The squeaky-clean striker told reporters: ‘I’m happily married with kids. I sometimes wonder what other people are looking for.’

However, the couple’s previously perfect life took a heartbreaking turn in 1991 when their son George developed a life-threatening illness just weeks after his birth.

He was six weeks old when Michelle noticed a tiny red spot on his forehead and three weeks later he was admitted to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London where he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

Lineker was playing for Tottenham at the time, and was one of the most famous footballers in the world having left Barcelona in 1989 and being the leading goal scorer in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

George spent the next seven months receiving chemotherapy treatment. It saved his life but it was several years before he was given the all clear.

Speaking to The Athletic’s ‘The Moment’ podcast with Kelly Cates and Geoff Thomas in 2022, Lineker said: ‘I’ll never forget that first night. I was with Michelle and they did all these tests and stuff. 

‘At the end of the night they gave us some sort of evaluation of prospects and they said it’s not good. They came to us with a somewhere between 10%- 20% survival rate with this thing at this age.’

George went on to thrive and the couple’s happy life seemingly continued as normal as they expanded their brood with three more sons – although rumours of Gary’s infidelity swirled.  

Shortly before the couple split, it was reported that Gary had exchanged ‘steamy’ comments with a mystery women. 

And when the couple parted, Gary was linked with a model who was working to promote a golf tournament.

Kate Hallam, who was 23 when she met Lineker, said they spent a blissful six months together, including candlelit dinners in top London restaurants.

It all came to an end after the romance became public via a Sunday newspaper. He broke off contact ignoring all further attempts to contact him.

In 2006 as Michelle and Gary were mid-split, it also emerged that wealthy Denise Moore, then 47, had separated with her husband of 23 years after being linked with the footballer. 

Mrs Moore was pictured sunbathing topless alongside Gary during a holiday in Barbados. Her husband Graham insisted that rumours his wife was having a relationship with the star were false.

In the years after Michelle, Gary went on to find love with model and actress Danielle Bux, who is 18 years his junior.

They married in Italy in September 2009 but divorced in 2016, reportedly over differing views on expanding their family. 

Danielle subsequently relocated to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career and went on to find love with Nate Greenwald, an Ivy League educated lawyer with CAA.

The model, already a parent to teenage daughter Ella, 17, from a former relationship, announced she was expecting her first child with Greenwald in February 2017.

The couple then welcomed their daughter, Romy Wren, in August 2017.

Gary and Danielle have remained close friends and were photographed having dinner together on the night of the broadcast of the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year show which he had previously hosted for 23 years.

Earlier this year, the pundit told The Rest Is Football podcast that not being on Match of the Day was unlikely to mean he’ll look for love to fill those extra hours he has on his hands. 

Fellow pundit Micah Richards teased Lineker about ‘getting you a partner’ but the idea was quickly shut down.

‘I’m so happy on my own,’ Lineker insisted. ‘I’ve got lots of friends I go out with and have dinner and have fun. I’m alright, Micah, honestly.

‘I’ve been married most of my adult life and I’m quite set in my ways and comfortable on my own now.’ 

Reflecting on his past relationships with The Times in 2021, he hinted that he and Michelle had also made peace. 

He told the newspaper: ‘Two really good marriages, I’m friends with both. Danielle’s kind of my best mate, so I have that female connection with her. I’m not saying whether it’ll change. It might do. But at the minute I’m very comfortable.’

In November last year, he was spotted enjoying a night out with visual artist Leila Bartell.

The pair headed to the popular Dorian restaurant in Notting Hill, west London, where Ms Bartell’s art studio is based.

Ms Bartell, who had previously studied law, is thought to be in her mid-40s, now describes herself as a ‘London-based painter and film director’.

Meanwhile, Michelle hasn’t been tempted to head back to the altar since her marriage to Gary ended. 

The 59-year-old is regularly seen enjoying holidays in Barbados, where she once shared a home with her ex-husband.