Sophie Ellis-Bextor has shared details about the beginning of her relationship with husband Richard Jones, a musician from the band The Feeling. The singer, 47, disclosed on Davina McCall's Begin Again podcast that both she and Jones were involved with other people when they first encountered each other. Ellis-Bextor met Jones when he auditioned to be a member of her band. "I walked into a rehearsal room and met him there and the first thing I said to him was nice amp," she recalled on the podcast. "We were both in relationships at the time." She added that they developed a friendship before their romantic involvement. "I have to say I was always quite cynical when people talked about being friends with someone you later become involved with romantically. I was like, 'How can that happen?' It sets up a really healthy dynamic and it means you like each other."
The couple kept their first date secret from friends and family because, although they were no longer in their previous relationships, they had been working together and wished to avoid gossip. "So, we kept it quiet, had a date. It was really lovely," Ellis-Bextor said. "And then um yeah, we'd been going out. I think we probably had a couple more dates, been going out about 6 weeks and then I realised I'm pregnant."
Ellis-Bextor and Jones married in 2005 and have five sons: Sonny, Kit, Ray, Jesse, and Mickey. Sonny was born two months premature after Ellis-Bextor developed preeclampsia. The singer noted the rapid progression of their relationship, stating, "We'd been dating for eight months, which is almost mathematically improbable. Absolutely mad, isn't it?"
In 2024, Ellis-Bextor experienced a resurgence in her music career when her 2001 song 'Murder on the Dancefloor' was featured in the movie 'Saltburn' and subsequently gained popularity on TikTok. Reflecting on this, she told Grazia, "I'm still getting my head around it. It's extraordinary. I think it's a once-in-a-lifetime unique kind of thing. The pressure is off; [the song] has been such a defining part of my career already that this new adventure is just a feeling of pure enjoyment and not really worrying too much about what it all means."