Inside GMB star Ed Balls' romance with Yvette Cooper as star yanked off air again

Ed Balls "sat out" a Good Morning Britain interview with his wife Yvette Cooper on Tuesday (August 5) following a previous bias row that led to thousands of Ofcom complaints. He swiftly went missing when the show returned from an ad break - leaving Kate Garraway to do the interview alone. The Secretary of State for the Home Department was welcomed onto the ITV show to discuss the latest migrant policies. This is not the first time Ms Cooper's husband, who is a regular host on GMB, has disappeared from viewers' screens. Balls's decision came after Cooper's appearance in August 2024, which received 8201 complaints, caused a bias row, with many believing Balls - a former Labour leadership candidate and cabinet minister - should not have been permitted to interview his wife.

While Ms Cooper has hit headlines for her handling of the migrant boat crisis, Express.co.uk takes an inside look into the couple's marriage. She returned to Labour's cabinet as Shadow Home Secretary, a role she previously held under Ed Miliband's leadership of the party. However, she is not the only person in her household to have held a senior shadow cabinet role.

Her husband, Balls, was elected as MP for Normanton in 2005 and would serve as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Now retired from frontline politics, Balls is a broadcaster, writer, and economist.

His website states that "He is Professor of Political Economy at King's College, London, a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and co-Chair of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation. His popular BBC TV series 'Travels in Trumpland: with Ed Balls' was broadcast in July 2018 and a second series 'Travels in Euroland with Ed Balls' aired on BBC 2 in January 2020."

The couple married on January 10, 1998, in Eastbourne and have three children.

The pair opened up about their marriage in a candid joint interview three years ago.

Ms Cooper admitted that despite the many "ups and downs" their relationship is stronger than ever.

She told the Times: "But mainly because it is founded on respect - we've had to be similarly forceful and determined but also mutually accommodating. When one of us has a lot of work on, the other picks up the slack.

"That said, I haven't cooked since before our first child was born and I don't intend to start. When Ed's away, it's ready meals or takeaway."

While Balls described his other half as "untidy" in the same interview it seems he would not have it any other way.

"Yvette and I got to know each other in the 1990s when I was working for Gordon Brown [then shadow chancellor] and she was working for Harriet Harman [then shadow chief secretary]," he shared.

"On our first date we drove down the Embankment in my Renault 5 harmonising to Elvis' s Can't Help Falling in Love. Four years later the whole congregation sang it at our wedding."

He added: "In private, Yvette is one of the most competitive people I've met. On holiday once, she almost drowned our niece during a game of water polo. But she's also one of the kindest.

I've lashed out against David Cameron and George Osborne, but I've never heard Yvette say anything narky about a political opponent. She's good at detail and will go after someone if she thinks they're wrong, but there's no spite."