Coronation Street legend Wendi Peters breaks silence on new love after split with husband of 33 years
CORONATION Street legend Wendi Peters has broken her silence about finding love again after splitting from her husband.
The actress – who played Cilla Battersby-Brown in the ITV soap – split with husband Kenny Linden after 33 years together last year.
Despite moving out of the family home last year after her split from actor hubby Kenny, Wendi’s new romance is going from strength-to-strengh.
The Weatherfield icon, 56, who lives in Buckinghamshire, has been dating Leicester dad Gareth Wale, 53, for the past 14 months.
Wendi tells The Sun online: “Moving in is certainly something we might consider.
“It’s very hard continuing a relationship when you’re 150 miles [round trip] away from each other, with very different work hours, so that may be something that will happen in the future.
“I was married a long time, and I mean, never say never to doing it again. At the moment, though, I just don’t really see the need.”
The pair met last year, after Wendi split from husband Kenny and moved out of the family home.
Wendi admits: “To be with somebody for 33 years and then to suddenly have to think about dating was a bit scary but my friends, my girlfriends, persuaded me to go online, eventually.
“Gareth popped up and we’ve been really happy since.
“We’d been chatting online for a while when he asked what I did. I said, ‘oh, well I’m an actress.’
“He said, ‘oh, what kind? Amateur, theatre, TV? I said I was in Coronation Street. Then there was a gap of about an hour before he emailed me back. Obviously, he’d been Googling!
“He said, ‘You’re a star. What are you doing talking to a carpet showroom fitter from Leicester?’.”
Revealing a bit more about Gareth, Wendi gushed: “Gareth has his business – his own carpet showroom.
“I love that he doesn’t really know about the [acting] business, and is starting to understand it a little bit.
“The fact that we have, in that respect, nothing in common gives us so much more scope for conversation.”
Wendi, who has daughter Gracie, 24, with her ex-husband also admits: “I guess the difference now is that we both have children who are grown-up. We obviously love them but they’re not there on a day-to-day basis any more, so we can focus on the two of us.
“We spend as much time as we can with each other and we’ll just see where it goes but I’m very happy.”
“We’ve done quite a lot of traveling together, which is rather nice.”
When Wendi played Mother Superior in a touring stage version of Sister Act for four months earlier this year, Gareth also made the effort to come and see her.
She jokes: “He was a bit of a groupie on the Sister Act tour because he has people working for him so he managed to get a few Mondays and Tuesdays off where he could get away and come to the venue I was at and stay for a couple of nights. It was romantic and lovely of him. So we managed to make it work.”
Over the summer Wendi posted a loved-up picture of the pair of them at a Richard Ashcroft gig.
At Easter, the couple enjoyed a romantic trip to The Cotswolds, with Wendi sharing a series of loved-up pictures on her Instagram. They’ve also previously holidayed in Crete, Greece.
Now the pair plan to enjoy an early Christmas celebration – to fit around a new pantomime role Wendi is playing in Greater Manchester.
The actress, who was also a 2009 Celebrity Masterchef finalist, is appearing as the evil fairy Carabosse in Sleeping Beauty, at The Stockport Plaza – something she hopes will capture the imagination of kids from an early age.
She says: “I’ve got a day off the week before Christmas, so I’m going down to Leicester then, and we’ll have Christmas down there then. Then we’ll be with our families on Christmas Day. It’s my dad’s birthday on Christmas Day so I always try to be with mum and dad for Christmas itself.”
To watch Wendi in Panto at Stockport Plaza, go to https://stockportplaza.co.uk/whats-on/sleeping-beauty/