Richard Keys, 66, ‘marries daughter’s ex-best friend’, 35

Couple were reportedly wed in a small ceremony with their close friends and family

Sports pundit Richard Keys, 66, has reportedly married his daughter’s former best friend Lucie Rose after splitting from his wife of 36 years in 2016.

The ceremony is said to have taken place in an outdoor civil ceremony in Kingswear near Brixham, Devon, and was attended by a small party of the couple’s closest friends and family.

The Daily Mail reports that Keys’s daughter Jemma and son Joshua did not attend. Pictures shared by the publication showed the couple standing in a garden filled with white roses and other flowers, with Lucie Rose wearing a white wedding dress with lace detail and floral embellishments, and a full veil.

The Independent has contacted Keys’s representative for comment.

Julia Keys reportedly filed for divorce on grounds of adultery, alleging that her then-husband had an affair with Lucie Rose, then 28.

In 2019, Keys denied that he left his wife, who was in remission for cancer at the time, for Lucie Rose.

“I’ll mention the unmentionable for you,” he told sports publication The Athletic. “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.”

Writing in her self-help book The MANscript, Julia claimed that her husband’s alleged affair had “devastated” both her and their two children.

“It is only now, two years on, that he has admitted he did have an affair with Lucie, as well as acknowledging his deceit and the damage it has caused,” she wrote.

“But for a year and a half, he was telling me it was all in my head, that I was imagining it, that I was going mad – lines that I now realise nearly every man comes up with when having an affair.”

Richard Keys and his daughter, Jemma, pictured in 2003 (Getty)

Former Hollyoaks actor Jemma, 33, was involved in a public court case and faced a six-month prison sentence after sending a string of abusive text messages to Lucie Rose. The case was later dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service.

“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 alcohol addiction,” she told the Mail on Sunday in 2018.

“I thought Lucie was my friend. I was devastated, distraught and angry.

“Of course, I can't justify what I did. But I felt like my father had been stolen from me... and the affair genuinely destroyed my family.”

Keys resigned from his £500,000-a-year job steering Sky’s Premier League coverage in 2011, while his colleague Andy Gray was sacked, after they made disparaging comments about female referee Sian Massey Ellis. They later issued an apology.

He currently works for the Qatar-based network beIN Sports.