Jayne Torvill husband: The devastating moment skater revealed her struggles to conceive

JAYNE TORVILL will return to screens across the nation tonight as she judges Dancing on Ice contestants.

Jayne Torvill is a renowned British professional ice skater. With her partner Christopher Dean she won a gold medal at the 1984 Winter Olympics and a bronze medal at the 1994 Winter Olympics. Now she is on television screens each week as she judges ITV’s Dancing on Ice. But how did the ice dancer come to reveal the heartbreaking struggle to get pregnant?

Many fans of Jayne and Christopher have mistakenly thought that she is married to him, but the pair have never been an item and Christopher lives with his wife Karen Barber and family in Colorado Springs, USA.

But despite repeatedly denying rumours of a romance between the pair, speculation about them continued through the years.

In 2011, Jayne claimed they banned themselves from sleeping together because they feared it would damage their skating partnership.

They have admitted in the past their close friendship often caused problems with their partners.

Jayne Torvill husband: How did Jayne reveal her struggles to conceive a baby (Image: GETTY/ITV)

Jayne Torvill husband: Jayne and Christopher at the European Championships in 1984 (Image: GETTY

Christopher’s first wife, fellow skater Isabelle Duchesnay, to whom he was married for two years between 1991 and 1993, referred to Miss Torvill as “the third person in my marriage”.

Speaking on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories in 2013, Christopher admitted the couple had kissed on a coach trip once, but a romance did not develop.

Christopher added: “It’s an unusual relationship that we have.

“And yet at the same time, of course, we love each other. You wouldn’t be able to do all that we do without love.’

But despite speculation about Jayne and Christopher, Jayne has been happily married to husband Phil for more than 25 years.

He is even accepting of Jayne and Christopher’s close bond, with the skater previously stating that her husband “knew” she would stay over at her dance partner’s house.

In 2010, she told the MailOnline: “My ­husband knew that’s where I was going. You [Christopher] stay at our house quite a lot.”

Jayne and her husband Phil now live in East Sussex with their two adopted children together, Kieran, 16, and Jessica, 12.

She usually keeps the personal details about her family private, but in 2013 she revealed the touching struggles she faced when trying to conceive.

Speaking on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories with her former skating partner she revealed she had suffered an ectopic pregnancy, before enduring 12 months of IVF treatment.

She broke down in tears as she opened up about the experience to the public for the first time.

She told Piers Morgan: “As a couple skating together, it’s easy for the guy to go off and start a family because it wouldn’t affect his skating.

“Whereas for me, it would have stopped what we were doing, so I left it quite late and I was into my forties by then.”

Jayne Torvill husband: Jayne and Christopher on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories (Image: ITV)

Jayne Torvill husband: Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean have been close for around 30 years (Image: GETTY)

She added: “I got pregnant quite quickly and I thought, ‘Oh this is fine’. And when I went to have a scan they said I had an ectopic pregnancy, and I didn’t know what that meant.

“They said, ‘The embryo’s growing in one of the tubes’. And I said, ‘Oh, ok, so how do you get it out then?’.

“And they said, ‘We don’t. We can’t’. That’s when it hit me.

“So I went through the surgery and then it was obvious it was going to be more difficult. So we tried IVF for about a year.

“That, as a lot of women know, is traumatic in itself.”

Jayne also revealed how a friend convinced her to adopt.

She said: “A friend of mine had adopted a little boy. She said, ‘Come and see him.’

“At that point, I wasn’t ready to look into adoption, I was still thinking it was going to happen.

“And you’ve got to be ready for it if you want to adopt. I said to my husband, ‘I don’t know if I can do this’.

“And I went to see this little boy, and I wanted to bring him home.”