Nicky & Georgina In Hello Magazine – April 2001

 

Nicky and Georgina, who have been romantically involved for six years, were photographed in the romantic setting of the Chateau Dampierre, near Versailles, in France.

 

Every day the two 12-year-olds stared longingly across the Dublin classroom at each other with expressions of undying love written on their faces. The boy told his mother:

 

"I've found the girl I'm going to marry." Today that girl, Georgina, is the daughter of Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, and the boy has grown up to become Westlife heart-throb Nicky Byrne.

 

But all these years later, despite Nicky's boast about having found his future wife, marriage isn't top of the agenda. In fact, they're not even engaged - and it seems unlikely that they will in the foreseeable future.  And yet none of this is connected with the widely held belief that the Westlife boys - Nicky, Bryan, Kian, Shane and Mark - has some sort of "gentleman's agreement" with their manager not to have children or get married in the next four years.

For a start, Bryan McFadden is already engaged to former Atomic Kitten star Kerry Katona and the couple, who plan to marry next year, are expecting their first baby in September.

 

So what lies behind the supposed "agreement" and the refusal of former childhood sweethearts Nicky and Georgina to become engaged, let alone make any firm marriage plans? HELLO! joined the couple at a romantic chateau in France to find the answer to these mysteries.

 

"At the beginning, when we were a young band, the press immediately wanted to know which of us had girlfriends," explains Nicky, 22. "At the time, I was the only one with a girlfriend and she was the Irish Prime Minister's daughter. Our management turned round and said,

 

"None of the Westlife boys is going to get married or have kids in the next five years. This band is going to be bigger than anything that's come out of Ireland and there's not going to be anything to stop them sky-rocketing. But there was no gentleman's agreement. We didn't deny it because, at the time, it suited our purposes not to."

 

University student Georgina, who is 22 in May, nods. There's little she doesn't know about Westlife in general and Nicky in particular. She has been with the blond Dubliner through thick and thin. She spurred him on when, at 16, he joined Leeds United's youth team and, two years later, she consoled him when the budding goalkeeper was thrown on the scrapheap because he was deemed too short at 5ft 10 in.

 

"He was my first boyfriend," she smiles, snuggling up to him. And they still behave like two teenagers who fell in love last week, despite having been romantically involved for six of the nine year that they've known each other.

 

They are incredibly close and, her university studies permitting, Georgina will join Nicky on choice dates of Westlife's current UK and foreign tour.

They have also just bought a four-bedroom house not far from Dublin and Georgina was involved in every stage of the house-hunting process. Nicky confesses that he doesn't know how he'd survive without her.

 

"She's my rock," he says. And, for her part, Georgina states:

 

"Nicky is totally, completely, my life."

 

So why are they both firm in their resolve to remain unmarried for the time being?

 

"I do want to marry Georgina - and I know she wants to marry me - but it can't happen yet," insists Nicky who, last month, saw Westlife notch up their eighth number one with their Comic Relief version of Billy Joel's Uptown Girl.

 

 "I'm travelling so much, and Georgina's busy at university with her Business Management studies, so what would be the point of us getting married?" "I want to put 100 per cent of my energies into Westlife and then, if we take a break or slow down, I can get married and start a family. But this won't be for the next three years, maybe not even for six years - who can predict?"

 

Georgina, whose parents are separated, agrees:

 

"I'm right behind Nicky on this, the time's got to be really right for us. After six years together, it's something we obviously talk about all the time, but neither of us wants to get married and then never be together in the way a married couple should be. Until the time is right for us, I don't mind waiting."

 

"Even when we get engaged," continues Nicky, "it will only be if we have a definite date in mind to get married. When I ask Georgina to marry me - or she asks me to marry her - it must be along the lines of, 'Will you marry me on June 24 next year?' I'll then be putting a ring on her finger with something tangible in mind."

 

Their respective families seem to have been expecting an engagement for some time.

 

"Not so long ago," recalls Georgina, "we invited all the family to dinner at a lovely restaurant in Malahide - the seaside resort where I come from, about eight miles from Dublin. It was a fancy affair and everyone thought we had a big announcement to make."

 

Nicky, still amused by the memory, continues: "My mum told me that my dad had said to her at some stage, 'Do you think they're getting married...?'"

 

"We heard later," adds Georgina, "that they'd been waiting all night for us to say something about our future plans as a couple."

 

"But," observes the singer, "they were all let down. The champagne was put on ice.

 

"Actually, I'd like to be married by the time I'm 25 or 26, and have a baby before I'm 28 or 29," Nicky continues. "I'd like to have four or five kids because I've only got one brother and one sister, and Georgina's only got one sister."

 

"I can't wait for us to have children," says Georgina, "because I think Nicky's going to be a brilliant father - good, fun, really loving and caring."

 

"If any of my kids went out and weren't home on time," he reflects, "I'd be up the wall with worry. I think that sort of over-protectiveness stems from how I was brought up. My mum and dad were great and there was nothing they wouldn't do for us kids."

 

For 18 years his painter-and-decorator father, also called Nicky, has been lead singer of a cabaret band called Nicky and Studz and he is responsible for whetting the future boy-band singer's musical appetite.

 

"My first time up on a stage was singing with him at my auntie's wedding," he remembers. But, touchingly, while he didn't have an ounce of nerves when it came to singing for his auntie, he was overtaken b prolonged bouts of shyness when it came to the pretty dark-haired firl who, like him, had just moved up to the Dublin secondary school. If confused the youngster because he normally wasn't like this, whereas Georgina, in her own words, was "very shy, very reserved, very quiet".

 

"I remember our first day at school," she says. "In the afternoon, when I went back home, some of my friends asked, 'What are the guys like?' I thought of Nicky and said, 'There's only one good-looking guy there, but I don't think he even noticed me.' That's how it seemed."

 

"I saw her all right," he corrects her. "The first thing I noticed were her eyes. It was just like, 'Oh my God!', I could have lost myself in her eyes! I looked at her and, I know it sounds daft, but I became shy and tongue-tied. I couldn't go up to her, couldn't talk to her, but I noticed everything about her."

 

Georgina squirms with embarrassment and involuntarily draws herself closer to him on the pink and yellow chaise lounge. "All the girls fancied him like mad, me included. When I first saw him in his smart new school uniform, his school-bag on his shoulder, he was kind of posing against the corridor wall."

 

"Because I fancied her so much," Nicky remembers, "I just couldn't go up to her and talk to her. But I went home at the end of that first day and told my mum, 'I've found the girl I'm going to marry.' My mum just laughed at me. How could I possibly know who I was going to marry at that age? But I know."

 

But knowing did nothing to alleviate the couple's frustrating period of three years when neither spoke to the other. Georgina's natural shyness and Nicky's nerves inhibited any form of verbal communication, even though they shared the same classroom for science, music, business studies and choir.

Nicky openly acknowledges the absurdity of the situation.

 

"From the moment I saw Georgina, I put her up on a pedestal. I could have a conversation with anyone, but I couldn't talk to Georgina. Not that I couldn't, I just wouldn't, because I was afraid that whatever I said would come out sounding stupid and she'd think I was a fool."

 

"And I was hopeless at helping him break the ice," admits Georgina. "I was sporty, I did table tennis and aqua-aerobics, and I had my own close group of friends. I just remember that we used to look at each other from our desks."

 

"We sat right opposite each other for science," affirms Nicky. "We'd literally stare at each other throughout the lesson. At business-studies class she sat right up the front and I'd see her either standing in the queue in the corridor before we went into class, or, if I turned up late, she'd already be in the class and I'd have to pass her desk and we'd smile at each other."

 

It was after a year of this that Nicky made a discovery about the girl he smiled at and said hello to. "It was Budget Day and I was sitting at home watching TV when this man in a dark suit came on the TV brandishing a briefcase - and there was Georgina standing next to him! I honestly didn't have a clue that her dad was Bertie Ahern, Ireland's then Finance Minister.

 

"Anyway, by this point I thought from glances and body language that she did like me, and I knew she knew that I liked her." So, two years after telling his mother that he'd met his future wife, Nicky set pout to change the ludicrous pattern of behaviour the two of them had settled into.

 

"There was a guy in my geography class called Michael who lived near Georgina and he caught the same bus home as her. "I said to him, 'Is there any chance you can ask her, if she's remotely interested, to ring me?' Next day he told me that her reaction was, 'No way!' I was devastated."

 

Explains Georgina: "I was coming out of school when this guy suddenly came up to me and said, 'Oh, Nicky wants to know whether it would be worth him contacting you?' I didn't know this guy that well and I thought he was messing around. I just walked on, but I never said I didn't want to meet Nicky."

 

A third year passed and the two of them remained tongue-tied. But then the big breakthrough came. Nicky recalls the chain of events that were to change their lives: "My best friend Colm spoke to one of her friends about me. I was football training in Dublin and he rang me and said Georgina's friend Anita would talk to Georgina about me next morning.

 

"Oh no, I thought. I'd been turned down a year ago by her and I didn't want to be turned down again. So at school the next day I tried to stop Anita from telling Georgina - but I was too late. 'Don't' worry,' she said, 'Georgina says she'd like to go out with you.' I was like, 'What?' I invited her to a party and we arranged to meet at another friend's house. It went on from there."

 

They both use the same phrase to describe their feelings: it was if a huge bubble had burst inside them and there was a wonderful sense of release. "I was really nervous before I met him, but I had a really good night," says Georgina. "We had our first kiss. It was a class act, a perfect kiss."

 

"It was just brilliant," enthuses Nicky. "Without sounding corny, it was eagerly awaited!"

 

The romance developed at a pace. Nicky had already met Georgina's mother Miriam at their home in Malahide, and Georgina had met Nicky's parents at his house in Dublin, when Georgina invited him to meet her father for lunch.

 

"As he was Finance Minister, I wondered what I could possibly talk to him about," says Nicky, "and the only thing I could think of was football. It turned out that, like me, he was a big Manchester United fan, so we had a great chat." But Nicky's biggest test came when he visited the Ahern's house for dinner. "I felt the situation was like something from the Titanic where Georgina was Kate Winslet, the posh one, and I was Leonardo DiCaprio, the not-so-posh one. I'm from a lovely background, but Georgina was from a richer area and her dad was who her dad was.

 

"So when I went to their house for dinner it was like, 'Oh my God, here we go.' Actually it was quite funny. We sat down with a bowl of soup, whereupon her dad picked up a roll, buttered it and dunked it in the soup. I thought, well, if he's doing that, so am I. That was cool"

 

Since then Bertie Ahern, the former Lord Mayor of Dublin who has been dubbed the "Mr Nice Guy" of Irish politics, has become Prime Minister. He is not only the youngest prime minister in Ireland's history but also the first to separate from his wife and openly carry on a romance with another woman - though he maintains a "friendly relationship" with Georgina's mother.

 

"Nicky and my dad get on really well," says Georgina. "My dad liked him from the moment he first met him. He always wants to know what Nicky's up to and avidly follows the fortunes of Westlife."

 

Nicky constantly refers to Georgina as his "rock". "She's an absolute diamond, so unaffected by anything to do with fame. We'll be somewhere and I'll say,' Look, there's Liam Gallagher,' and she's like, 'Oh yes,' and that'll be it.

 

"She's known me for so long, which gives us that 'something extra'. During my time with Leeds United we'd spend every single day on the phone, but when I came back ad my world was turned upside down and I didn't know what to do with my life, it was Georgina who was my spur and inspiration.

 

"I bought a karaoke machine and she used to come out to the karaoke bars with me. She used to baby-sit my little brother with me. Her dad used to give her pocket money on a Sunday and she'd buy me a takeaway. I'd gone from having a lot of money at Leeds to have nothing back home in Dublin. I was heartbroken. And then suddenly the opportunity to be in this new Irish band came along and she was 100 per cent behind me. She said, 'Go for the audition with all your heart, you know you can do it', and it paid off and Westlife was born."

 

They faced their first danger as a couple in early March in central London when the mini-cab they were in was hit from the side by another car. "When I saw the car heading towards us," says Georgina, "I put my head down and closed my eyes and hugged Nicky. After the impact everything went blank and I couldn't stop shaking."

 

"As we started to skid," continues Nicky, "I put my arms around Georgina. We were thrown violently forward. We were very lucky, though, because somehow we managed to walk away without a scratch."

 

"The first thing we did," explains Georgina, "was call our parents. We talked to my dad first because we knew the press would be on to him. We said, 'We're fine, but we've been in a car accident.' He was obviously glad to hear we were okay."  Now they are excited by the prospect of moving into their first home as a couple, Nicky considers the practicalities of what they have between them.

 

"To be honest," he reasons, "Westlife will probably be over in a decade from now because of the type of band we are. But no matter what the future holds for me, I just pray I'm with Georgina.

 

"Hopefully they money I get from Westlife will look after both of us for the rest of our lives. All I know that if it wasn't for Georgina I wouldn't be the person I am today. She's my morning, noon and night. She's my everything."

 

Credit/Source: Hello! Magaine