Jill Halfpenny has been pictured with new boyfriend Ian McAllister for the first time, after recently revealing she’s found love again following the death of her partner Matt Janes.
The actress, 49, and marketing executive Ian, 48, were all smiles last week as they attended the Tees Valley Film Festival in Stockton-on-Tees, marking their first public outing together as a couple. It’s Jill’s first relationship since she tragically lost her boyfriend Matt, who suffered a heart attack at the gym in 2017. Heartbreakingly, his death mirrored the circumstances in which the actress also lost her father Colin. He died of a heart attack during a local league football match in 1979, when Jill was just four.
The former Strictly star previously confessed that her double loss made her feel ‘cursed’, saying, ‘How can that happen twice?’ But in her June 2024 memoir A Life Reimagined: My Journey Of Hope In The Midst Of Loss, Jill – who is mum to son Harvey, 11, with ex-husband Craig Conway – detailed the impact that meeting Ian had on her.
‘For the first time since Matt died, I have met someone and fallen in love,’ she wrote. ‘We met 11 days after I was offered this book deal, and it was a random and unexpected meeting. His name is Ian and he is kind and funny and intelligent. The relationship has helped me understand the importance of all the work I have done before I met him. I can allow myself to be happy and in love without feeling any guilt.’
Jill also previously admitted that Matt had urged her to ‘find someone else and be happy again’ if anything ever happened to him, before his untimely death aged 43. And she has been able to confide in Ian about her tragic loss. ‘One of the things I was most scared of was Ian not being able to handle me talking about Matt. I needn’t have worried,’ she said. ‘Ian has asked about Matt from the very beginning. I have never once felt as though he sees him as a threat, and it makes me have even more admiration for him.