X Factor star Lucy Spraggan announces engagement and says Simon Cowell will walk her down aisle
Lucy Spraggan is engaged to her friend of ten years, Emilia Smith. (Instagram/@LSpraggan)
The X Factor star Lucy Spraggan has announced her engagement to friend Emilia Smith, and revealed that music boss Simon Cowell has promised to walk her down the aisle.
“Tea and Toast” singer Spraggan, 32, first suggested getting engaged to her friend of ten years, photographer Emilia Smith, in January – just one month after the pair made their relationship official.
Speaking to The Sun’s Fabulous Magazine, Spraggan revealed that the pair agreed to marry while on a flight to Barbados, where they were set to holiday with former The X Factor judge Simon Cowell and his fiancé, Lauren Silverman.
“On the plane, I don’t even know who said what, but I was like: ‘Let’s just get married!’ Both of us were like: ‘Yeah!’ It just made loads of sense”, she said.
Who is Lucy Spraggan’s partner Emilia Smith?
Lucy Spraggan met Emilia Smith back in 2013 via mutual friends, but Smith initially thought the singer-songwriter was “loud and obnoxious” – until Spraggan got sober in 2019, and they grew closer.
“Emilia and I were those friends who said: ‘If we’re not married by the time we’re 40, we’ll get married to each other,’ and somehow, this deep friendship opened up into attraction,” Spraggan told the magazine.
In March, the couple made their engagement official during a family games night.
“We all put ‘Who Am I?’ stickers on our foreheads and Emilia’s read: ’Will you marry me?’ When she finally guessed, I asked her to be my wife. There were tears all round,” she shared.
The pair are due to marry this June. It will be Spraggan’s second time down the aisle, following her separation from ex-wife Georgina Gordon in 2019, after three years of marriage.
This time, it will be Cowell walking Spraggan to the alter, after the singer asked the record label executive to give her away while they were swimming in the sea while on their recent holiday.
“We’d been staying at Simon and Lauren’s house for a few days. One morning, Simon was about to get in the sea and I said: ‘Will you give me away?’ and he replied: ‘Yeah!’ He went off for a swim and when he came back, he said: ‘I’d absolutely love to. It would be an honour,’” Spraggan said.
Spraggan, whose memoir Process was released last year, disclosed that her friendship with Cowell has gone from strength to strength in recent years.
Last year, Lucy Spraggan revealed that Cowell had apologised for the way his show The X Factor handled Spraggan being sexually assaulted while she was a contestant on it, back in 2012.
Spraggan was assaulted by a hotel porter following a night out for fellow contestant Rylan Clark’s 24th birthday, and left the contest two weeks later. She has previously explained that she felt let down by the way ITV handled the aftermath of the assault.
“[Cowell’s] apology healed a part of my being that I didn’t know needed healing,” Lucy has now explained.
“When we first made contact, I didn’t think for one second that all this would blossom into friendship… We ended up talking about life, then he’d call to say: ‘I just wanted to check in on you.’”
In an emotional Instagram post following the news of her engagement, Spraggan thanked Smith for being with her on her “darkest days”.
“Every single part of life has had to happen in order to be standing right beside you now and I honestly would not live any other kind of alternative even if I could,” she wrote.
“You were the prize. All the hard work and all the survival got us both to where we were supposed to be: thriving beside each other.”
