I MET Stacy in 1978 while working onboard a cruise ship in the Mediterranean. She was visiting from California with her family and we spent two wonderful weeks together before she disembarked.

We stayed in touch and visited each other. After a couple of years though, distance and ambition pulled us apart. I channelled my energy into becoming a TV and radio host and Stacy went on to university.

Every year at Christmas and on my birthday I would receive a card from her, but in 1987 the postman stopped bringing them. Stacy had married someone else and so had I.

One day in 2004, while living in Spain, my agent emailed saying that a girl from California was trying to contact me. Stacy had found me via the internet and was coming to Europe on holiday.

At Malaga airport I hid nervously behind a pillar watching the inbound passengers coming through the gate, hoping I would recognise her. I need not have worried. As the doors slid open, there she was, with the same smiling eyes I had last seen 26 years before.

As we hugged in the arrivals lounge, I jokingly suggested we stop wasting time and get married. She stayed with me for three days before returning to the USA. I knew I couldn't waste any more time, so I flew out to her a week later. We made plans to marry in Devon and settle in Spain. First we had to attend British immigration in LA. As we waited to be questioned for our marriage visa, Stacy received a phone call from her doctor — she had aggressive breast cancer and would need to be hospitalised immediately.

I returned to Spain to discard all the preparations I had made before flying back to her two days later. We were homeless and jobless in LA, waiting for her treatment to end and for her hair to grow back for our wedding. We married on Malibu Beach on August 24, 2005.

This week we celebrated both our fifth anniversary and Stacy's five-year clean bill of health too — happy anniversary, darling x.