Pictures: Alex Curson, Amalia Osborne
It’s not unusual for a milestone birthday to prompt some big life changes, but nothing could have prepared radio star and columnist Jay-Jay Feeney for the enormous shake-up her world has undergone since she turned 50.
Within just a few months of celebrating her half-century in April, she walked away from her 33-year career in radio, ended her two-and-a-half-year relationship and started a business with ex husband Dom Harvey.
But the most exciting development in the inimitable broadcaster’s life has, until now, been a closely guarded secret. Behind the scenes, Jay-Jay has been rekindling her long-distance love affair with Minou, an Algerian medical salesman 18 years her junior.
And as she sits down to spill the beans with Woman’s Day, it’s a giddy Jay-Jay who tells us that despite the complications of living on opposite sides of the world, she couldn’t be happier about getting back together with her “ridiculously hot toyboy”.
“He has this energy about him,” says the former More FM host, admitting that since they called time on their relationship four years ago, she never quite managed to get him out of her mind.
“He is so sweet and likeable, and he’s genuine – he really cares about other people. He’s quite sensitive but funny too, which is pretty cool considering English is his third language after Arabic and French.”
And now, after a top-secret reunion in Bali earlier this year, the loved-up couple are back to figuring out their future. Long-distance love is very complicated, but the pair are determined to be together.
“I’m definitely not moving to Algeria and before he met me, Minou had no interest in New Zealand,” says Jay-Jay. “But he says he’d move here for me, which is so lovely. In fact, he says he’d live anywhere as long as it’s with me!”
Their unlikely love story began back in 2018, when Jay-Jay received a random message on Facebook from the handsome young Algerian. Suspicious he was a scammer, she ignored it, until three or four more messages arrived.
“My first thought was that he was too good-looking to be talking to me! I kept thinking, ‘What’s a guy from Algeria doing looking at pictures of girls in New Zealand?’ I was wary, but I was also kind of entertained by him, so in the end, I wrote back something like, ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ I still thought he was a scammer, of course.”
Minou explained he’d seen a photo of Jay-Jay and liked what he saw. “He thought I looked fun and smiley, which is why he said hi. He swears I had just popped up on the ‘suggested friends’ list.”
The pair got chatting, then eventually moved to video calls and, over the following months, their Facebook friendship turned romantic. Jay-Jay boldly flew to the Maldives to meet Minou for the first time. While she knows some people thought she was crazy for taking a chance with a virtual stranger almost 20 years younger, she simply had to see if these feelings were real.
“I didn’t even really expect anything from it – I just thought it was a fun adventure. I wasn’t in love at that stage, but I was definitely in lust!”
However, their feelings grew and after meeting for another holiday together in Malaysia, Minou, now 32, visited Jay-Jay in New Zealand. She took her young boyfriend on a fun-filled tour of Aotearoa, they spent Christmas together with Jay-Jay’s family and she introduced him to Dom, whom Jay-Jay counts as her best friend.
But while Jay-Jay hoped she and Minou had a future, COVID travel restrictions in 2020 saw them facing months or years of separation. Jay-Jay – who describes herself as a realist – called time on the burgeoning relationship.
She was heartbroken, but she couldn’t see the point in continuing the relationship if it didn’t have a future. “It was devastating. I just shut him off and he did the same to me. We felt like we had to get on with our lives.”
Determined to move on, Jay-Jay began dating again and ended up in a relationship with Hoani Molnar. But she says that as she approached her 50th birthday, her sense of unease grew. She knew things had run their course.
As well as leaving More FM, where she hosted the Drive show with Paul “Flynny” Flynn, she broke up with Hoani. “I feel bad for him because he’s a great guy, but for me, the spark just wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to hold him back.”
Suddenly single, Jay-Jay’s thoughts turned to Minou. Eventually, she sent a message asking, “How are you?”
“I was so nervous because I didn’t know if he’d found a new partner or got married even,” she says. “But he wrote back straightaway and said he’d been wanting to message me so much, but he was just leaving me to live my life. He said he thinks Allah brought us back together!”
Daily contact resumed and, in July, Jay-Jay – who’d dropped 10kg after following a diet and exercise programme devised by The Bachelor Australia’s Sam Wood – flew to Bali. Her social media followers might have assumed it was a solo trip. However, behind the scenes, she and Minou were enjoying a loved-up reunion on the Indonesian island.
“We needed to see if the connection was still there,” she says. Jay-Jay confesses she only told a few close friends the truth about the holiday. “I didn’t want to shout it to the world yet. I just wanted to keep him to myself for a bit.”
Jay-Jay says she and Minou, a Muslim who lives at home with his mother, picked up exactly where they left off. She pulls out her phone to show the video of their reunion at the airport, where the excited pair ran into each other’s arms.
“We were both screaming and hugging, and everyone in the airport was looking at us, but I didn’t care. Minou was so cute – he wouldn’t stop hugging me and kissing me.”
Their time together was amazing, she says. The pair were left in no doubt that their love was as strong as the first time around. Saying goodbye at the end of those three weeks was devastating. “We were both bawling our eyes out.”
Now they’re back again to communicating by video calls and text messages. “He’s so romantic. He writes the most poetic things. I’m the opposite – I’m like, ‘Love you, honey!’” Jay-Jay tells us that Dom fully supports her relationship with Minou. She’s loving running the podcast studio business PodLab with the man she was married to for 17 years and says the joint idea came along just at the right time. When a burnt-out Jay-Jay resigned from More FM, she had no idea what she would do next.
“I was really scared. I had thought, ‘What can I possibly do? I’m only trained to be on the radio!’ But a week after I resigned, Dom said to me, ‘Oh, my God, this space has come up for lease. We should get it.’ All of a sudden, I’m a businesswoman, and I’m getting an accountant and lawyers, and taking a lease. It was crazy, but a good crazy.”
In January, Jay-Jay and Dom, who share custody of their dog Kanye, are taking their friend Stephen (“Stephen from Dunedin”) Gibson to Los Angeles after leading a fundraising campaign to help him achieve his bucket-list goal of attending an NBA game.
While Dom will fly home with Stephen, who has special needs, Jay-Jay is carrying on to Morocco. There, she’s meeting up again with Minou.
Beyond that, the couple are not sure when they’ll next see each other. Jay-Jay hopes Immigration New Zealand will approve a Visitor Visa. That would mean Minou can travel Down Under again next year and stay for up to six months. While she’s adamant she will never move to Algeria, she concedes they might have to live together in Bali if Minou isn’t given access to Aotearoa.
“I want to spend some time with Minou doing normal life, rather than being on holiday. We need to work out if he could actually live here permanently. I don’t want anyone to force me into making a rash decision. Moving to Bali just because New Zealand won’t let him come visit here seems a bit extreme, but who knows?”
She realises they’re an unconventional pair, but insists the relationship’s genuine.
“I’ve never had this sort of connection with anyone. It seems strange, I know, because of the age gap and the cultural differences, but when you know, you know. He really is the best guy ever. I’m smitten.”
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