Homesick Kate Ferdinand admits that life in the Dubai sunshine with hubby Rio and their three youngest children has left her yearning for rainy England.
Kate Ferdinand, who is living in sunny Dubai with husband Rio and their three youngest children, has opened up about missing rainy old England. While their youngest son Cree, five, is already a gifted linguist – speaking Mandarin and Arabic – she is struggling and has set herself a target of learning just one Arabic word a week.
Choking back tears, Kate, who moved to Dubai from Bromley, south east London, last August, says: “I just miss my family and friends.”
Rio, 47, stepped down as a pundit for TNT Sports, covering the Champions League across Europe last year. His remaining business interests include his YouTube channel, Rio Ferdinand Presents, which has over 1.3million subscribers, and his clothing line FIVE, in collaboration with Sports Direct.
READ MORE: TOWIE star to share her agony over baby girl she ‘never heard laugh’ in moving memoir
Kate – who married Rio in 2019, following his first wife’s death from breast cancer in 2015, aged 34 – says of their “new chapter” in Dubai: “I feel like we’ve opened our eyes to a different world. But I love London, I love the UK. I love so many things about the UK.
“I do feel happy in Dubai, but I’m just missing a part of me.” The move, she says, has made Rio more “present” for the family, despite having to fly to other countries to work as a pundit.
But only their children together – Cree, Tia, 13, and Shae, 2, have moved with them. Rio’s older sons, Lorenz, 19, and Tate, 17, by his late wife, Rebecca Ellison – have remained in the UK as they try to carve out football careers with Brighton.
Kate, who first met Rio in Dubai in 2016, continues: “I think it’s an amazing place to live, I think it’s amazing for the children. The children are thriving and happy and living a life of just outside freedom.
“Rio loves it so much. I am enjoying it, but I miss home quite a lot. I get upset. I miss the big boys a lot and I’m just struggling with that. I know this decision is right for my younger children and as a family we are settled there, but the boys are following their football careers. So they’re doing what they want to do otherwise they’d be with us.
“But it’s very hard because we’ve been through so much as a family and we’ve always been together and that’s a huge adjustment.”
Kate says Dubai is very safe, which she loves, but that she even misses the English weather. She continues: “If I could merge the two worlds together it would be absolutely perfect.
“I think I miss people. I miss the rain. The cold, cool air on your face. I miss the culture of England. Certain types of people and all different types of people. That’s also something I like about Dubai, that my kids are being brought up with all sorts of cultures.”
Cree is even teaching her to speak Arabic. She says: “He’s saying ‘Yalla Habibi’ (Come on, my friend).”
Given the chance, she thinks Rio would stay in Dubai forever. She adds: “He’s been travelling a lot for the last three weeks, but the work life balance is better. When he’s at home he’s at home and present, whereas before he was working a lot”
She says he has less stress and they spend more quality time together. Kate adds: “We just go for walks and stuff. We did a lot together before ,but I didn’t realise how much we were separate, because there was a lot in the diary.
“He does the school run a lot of days. That’s a really nice thing.” And while she misses home, Kate says she doesn’t dislike Dubai. She adds: “It’s not like I’m unhappy, I’m adjusting.”
READ MORE: Celebrity Gogglebox star Gyles Brandreth opens up about grandson’s ‘horror diagnosis’
