How We Met: Why Ryan 'Fitzy' Fitzgerald tried his luck a second time

"I saw her and I knew straight away," says Ryan 'Fitzy' Fitzgerald.

The popular radio host first knows love at first sight sounds corny, but when he met Belinda – BJ – in the south of Adelaide in the early noughts, he believed in it anyway: the attraction was instant.

"She’s just a beautiful girl, inside and out," he tells 9Honey. "Her smile, her eyes... yeah, she basically sucked me in straight away."

Conveniently enough, they had a connection – her sister was the sister-in-law of a very good friend. But BJ was taken. They spoke a couple of times but nothing happened, and he didn't see her again for two years.

Then he ran into her at the airport. (She was a flight attendant, and if you don't think that's an iconic meet-cute, I can't help you.)

"I started talking to her again," Fitzy – co-host of Nova's co-host of Nova's – recalls. "I said, 'Are you still with your man?'"

BJ said she was, but that it wasn't necessarily going so well.

"I just thought that was my perfect opportunity to slide in," Fitzy says with a grin. "And it happened from there – persistence paid off."

He made things a bit more serious after a day at Adelaide's Big Day Out in 2005. Even though BJ was living in Brisbane at the time, he asked if he could see her again, take her out for a coffee.

She said yes, obviously.

Just like she did a bit later, when he surprised her with the proposal – though the way Fitzy tells it, he almost kept the secret too well.

He arranged a little table in the upstairs gallery space of a Barossa Valley winery: candles, wine, the works. And at ten to five, after a day of wine tasting, he convinced BJ (despite her protests) that they had to try this one last place.

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"We went up there and the table was ready and BJ goes, 'Are we allowed to be here? I wonder who that’s for!'

"And I go, 'That’s for us.' Even then, she still thought it was for her birthday, which was three months down the track."

As they made their way through a nice romantic meal, BJ still wasn't getting the point. 

So halfway through a conversation about that viral video with the lion and the wildebeest and the crocodile (you know, this one), Fitzy just went for it.

"So I got down on one knee and she started crying her eyes out."

They've now been together 12 years – married 10-and-a-half. With two sons to look after (Hewie, 9, and Lenny, 5), Fitzy says his wife is constantly an incredible source of fun and support.

"Our boys are everything in our lives now; we're really excited to see how they mould into little men – that’s everything for us at the moment," he says.

He says that while he's a pretty traditional father figure, disciplining the kids and "trying to keep them on the right track", BJ's warm and physical, and a born nurturer.

"She loves being with the boys and she’s always asking what they want to do next – there’s a lot of sport involved, which I love," the former AFL footballer admits.

"She's brilliant."

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Between early radio shifts, school drop-off and various footy matches, the pair try to find time for each other too: dinner dates, films, whatever.

 https://www.instagram.com/p/BC8b23ts6l0/

"She's the life of the room, she loves having a good time, and she'll do anything for anybody.

"Giving, enthusiastic – she’s just a beautiful soul."

To see more stories from 9Honey's How We Met series, head here. And if you know someone with a beautiful love story of their own (or you have one), email me: idewey@nine.com.au