Inside Eurovision’s Graham Norton’s love life including ‘secret’ wedding

For millions of Eurovision viewers, Graham Norton is essentially part of the contest itself at this point.

But while the presenter spends every year narrating Europe’s most chaotic musical event, his own love life has remained surprisingly private.

If your day job involves sitting in what Graham once described as a glorified ‘garden shed’ making jokes about Moldovan techno-folk acts to 160 million people, you probably want at least some parts of life to remain calm.

Born in Dublin and raised in County Cork, Norton first rose to fame in the 1990s with his chaotic late-night Channel 4 chat shows before becoming one of the BBC’s biggest stars through The Graham Norton Show, where he has interviewed everyone from Hollywood A-listers to pop icons.

Alongside his long-running talk show career, Norton has become a central part of the Eurovision Song Contest for UK viewers, serving as the BBC’s commentator since 2009 following in the footsteps of the late Terry Wogan.

He has also hosted radio programmes, written novels and become a fan favourite judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Eurovision host’s private life before the grand final on Saturday.

Graham Norton’s ‘secret’ wedding in Ireland

The Graham Norton Show host married filmmaker Jonathan ‘Jono’ McLeod in July 2022 after several years together, with the pair tying the knot in a low-key ceremony in West Cork, Ireland.

While around 120 guests reportedly attended — including several famous faces — the wedding itself was notably private, with Graham largely keeping details away from the spotlight.

Reports later claimed Lulu even performed during the celebrations, proving it wasn’t a glamourless affair despite the privacy.

The location was chosen partly so Graham’s mother could attend comfortably.

‘We had our wedding party near where my mother lives in Ireland just so she could come,’ he later explained. ‘She wouldn’t have been well enough to come to London.’

Despite now sounding suspiciously like somebody who owns matching towels on purpose, Graham previously admitted marriage was something he never truly expected would happen.

‘I’m from that generation of gays who assumed it was never going to be on the cards,’ he said before the wedding. ‘So it’s extraordinary that it can happen.’

In classic Graham Norton fashion, however, romance is always balanced with just enough existential dread to stop things becoming too sincere.

Speaking to The Guardian, he once joked about married life: ‘We only have to put up with each other for a couple of decades. And then I’ll be out of here.’

But he’s also spoken about it more earnestly, saying of married life: ‘It’s good! I feel like I’ve turned on my tribe. You know when people in relationships, or who are married, want it for you? You just want me to do it to validate the choice you made!

‘But I am enjoying it. I was older, so I went into it with my eyes wide open. You know the pitfalls of relationships, the dangers. But I met someone who I was willing to take a bet on,’ he told Attitude.

Graham Norton’s past relationships

Before meeting McLeod, Graham had several high-profile relationships, including with music marketing consultant Andrew Smith and former partner Trevor Patterson.

Patterson, a fashion consultant, later told The Mirror of Norton: ‘In the early stages of our relationship I was aware of his dating history and knew I was one in a line of 20-somethings, so I never saw it as long-term. I just knew to enjoy the time while it lasted – and we did have great times.

Trevor, who was 30 when the pair began dating in 2011, said of the star: Graham’s a really magnetic guy. He could really tell a story. He’s engaging and always makes people feel at ease when he meets them for the first time. Those are the things that really stand out.’

Norton has also spoken candidly over the years about the strange pressures fame placed on those relationships, admitting he often felt male partners struggled to find a clearly defined role in his intensely public world.

‘This will sound sexist but that doesn’t mean it’s any less true. If I were a straight man, my female partner would have a role in the eyes of society. She would be the mother of my children, my hostess, the person on my arm at red-carpet events.

She would have a defined function. But that’s not the case if your partner is male,’ he told the Sunday Mirror.

At one point after his breakup from Andrew, Graham even dramatically declared he would rather live alone forever than deal with incorrectly folded towels.

He said in a chat with Radio 2 show co-presenter Maria McErlane at the time: ‘You have your own rules as you get older. I would prefer to live alone for the rest of my life rather than live with towels that were folded incorrectly. Petty is important. That’s why marriages break up. Marriages don’t break up because of big things.’

Graham Norton’s relationship with Drag Race star Tina Burner

The presenter also briefly dated future RuPaul’s Drag Race star Tina Burner, whose real name is Kristian Seeber.

Seeber later described Graham as ‘such a great guy’, while Graham himself admitted in his memoir, The Lives and Loves of a He Devil, that moving in with Seeber was a mistake: ‘The experiment lasted for about six months and it was a disaster.

‘I realise that even to a perfect stranger the outcome would have been glaringly obvious, but when you are in the middle of something and you are desperate for it to work, you’ll try anything.’

Despite years of tumultuous relationships and his public insistence that he was perfectly content alone, Graham now seems genuinely settled.

And while Graham continues spending every May trapped inside his tiny Eurovision commentary booth trying not to accidentally offend Poland again, he now returns home to something he long assumed might never happen for him at all: a happy marriage quietly unfolding away from the cameras.

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