Coleen Rooney has opened up about the beginning of her relationship with Wayne Rooney. The wife of the former Everton FC and Manchester United forward appeared on the Late Late Show on Friday evening. She spoke to host Patrick Kielty about her family as well as her latest Primark range.
Coleen and Wayne Rooney, who are the proud parents to four sons, first met when they were 12. They didn’t start dating until they were 15. The talk show host asked the I’m A Celebrity star about her experience of being in the public eye from such a young age.
She said: “It wasn’t tough at the time. We were both young and oblivious, we had each other to fall back on and we went through it together. Now when I look back and my son is 16, we were young.
“The main thing for us is we have always had a really good team around us. We have good parents that have always protected and guided us.”
Speaking about how the relationship blossomed, Coleen added: “I went to an all girl school and he went to an all boy school, he used to come and stand outside school waiting for us to come out.
“He always used to whistle and we wore pale yellow shirts, so the boys would get water guns and shoot us so our shirts turned see through. He done the running after me. I made him wait for a few years.
“He said to my brothers ‘I will get you a pair of football boots if you get me a date with your Coleen’, I waited until I had finished my GCSEs and then I went on a date.”
Throughout Rooney’s playing career, Coleen was a huge part of the “wag” culture, alongside other footballers’ wives, such as Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Cole. She spoke about the effect of having this label.
The 39-year-old said: “The wag label annoyed me, it put us all into one category and we were all our own individual people. The perception of a wag was that we were the ladies of leisure who would drink champagne and go shopping all the time, but it wasn’t.
“We had families and we had kids. We would do school runs, things that everyone else did. We were lucky to have nice times, but it wasn’t all the time.”
Kai Rooney, the eldest son of football legend Wayne Rooney, has taken a significant step in his developing career. The 16-year-old forward has signed with sports management agency, Triple S Sports.
Kai currently plays for the Manchester United U18 team, aiming to follow in his famous father’s footsteps. He joined the Red Devils’ youth academy back in 2020 when he was 11 years old.
Both parents, Wayne and Coleen Rooney, publicly showed their pride and support for the news on Instagram. Wayne posted a red heart emoji, while Coleen added a “Proud of you” sticker to the announcement.