Penny Lancaster in surprise marriage update as couple mark 26 years together

Penny Lancaster opened up about her marriage to Rod Stewart as they celebrated 26 years together while taking "some time apart". She told Best magazine: "Yes, 26 years! I deserve a medal, don't I? Only joking. We don't take each other for granted and make sure we have date nights together - dinner, the theatre or whatever, doing the school run together and having an 'a deux' coffee on the way home, long romantic walks together... We flirt with each other and make each other laugh."

Penny explained that they try to "keep the intimacy alive" when they get moments alone, and they love to mark their relationship milestones. She also said that the secret to keeping the spark alive was "time apart", with the couple finally set to reunite after three weeks apart.

Penny added: "We're desperately missing each other and have been counting down the days. Right from the start of our 26 years together, we've spent time apart."

Rod was 53 with two marriages behind him when he met Penny, who was a 27-year-old part time model and photography student at the time. They share two sons, Alastair, 21, and Aiden, 15, together. They got together in 1999, and tied the knot in 2007 in Portofino, Italy.

Penny said to Saga magazine last year that she was not a fan of Rod when they first got together.

She admitted: "I wasn’t a fan. And I definitely wasn’t thinking of a relationship because I was coming out of a long-term one, which wasn’t easy,” she recalls. “Rod was such an unknown entity.

"There were a lot of times after that night when I thought, ‘What the hell am I getting myself into?’. But Rod’s world was a vortex and I was sucked in."

Rod and Penny now have five grandchildren by his children Kimberly, Ruby and Liam.