Then he's leaving a note for me on the bench or he's got me the toast out and coffee ready to go when I get back."Īdds Ryan: "He used to be a professional athlete, so he's been in some high-pressure situations and I think that his drive was one of the things that really endeared me to him. "When I do The AM Show, it means he gets woken up at 2.45am when the alarm goes off. Radio hosts normally mine their personal lives for content, but Ryan's been careful to keep his romance with his partner of two years private. While radio hosts traditionally mine their personal lives for content, Ryan's been very careful to keep his romance with his partner of two years private from his radio show listeners. We get along really well and I consider him a mate."
The last thing I wanted people to think was that he had done it from a nasty place, because it wasn't. "Middle-aged women told me, 'Damn it, we thought one day you'd be ours!' So I felt that in the end, it was all good. Bruce from Timaru emailed, 'Me and me mates love watching you and we don't care who you're shagging!'" he laughs.
"I received the most hilarious emails from listeners and viewers in the weeks afterwards. However, the experience has shown him that couldn't be further from the truth. Ryan says he'd always worried that if he did come out, people wouldn't accept him or find him relatable any more. I wanted to be known as a good interviewer or a talented broadcaster before being the 'gay guy from TV'." It's just not at the forefront of how I describe myself. "Well, I guess I had in a way by not saying it publicly. "It's not that I had hidden it," he pauses.