Gary Numan looked back on the moment he first met Gemma O’Neill—then a 12-year-old fan—at a fan event around 1980, and described how their romance restarted years later through a phone call tied to her mother’s death.
When Gary Numan remembers meeting Gemma O’Neill, he doesn’t start with love songs or a red-carpet story. He starts with a fan event in a different era—around 1980—when she was still a child and he was just 22.
Numan, 68, said he first interacted with O’Neill, now 58, when she was 12 and he was 22, with the age gap clearly in view: she was 10 years his junior. The encounter came at a fan event, and years later, the connection became something else.
In an interview with The Times published on Wednesday. June 24. Numan explained that he and O’Neill reconnected when O’Neill was 18 and he was 28. He reached out in 1992 by contacting a fan club O’Neill was part of. aiming to get her phone number so he could offer his condolences for her mother’s death.
“That’s how I attracted her, which I think is illegal now,” Numan quipped.
The phone exchange didn’t land smoothly at first. Numan said O’Neill “put the phone down” because she thought it was somebody playing a cruel trick. When he called back, she questioned him—making sure the voice on the line was really his. Only then did the conversation turn toward a first date.
For that first date, Numan said he took O’Neill to a Little Chef. He framed the choice as something grounded rather than glamorous: “I’m very down to earth. I don’t do all that flash, rich man, pop star stuff,” he explained.
Their relationship led to marriage in 1997. Numan and O’Neill have since welcomed daughters Raven, 23, Persia, 21, and Echo, 19.
O’Neill has also shared her own version of how it began, in a 1997 interview with The Independent. She recalled that her big brother Shane was always buying albums. and that she saw the back cover of Gary’s first Tubeway Army album. She said she thought. “I like the look of that bloke. ” took the record. started playing it. and was hooked—naming Gary. Toyah. and Siouxsie and the Banshees as “my people.”.
O’Neill said she was 11 when her feelings started as “a schoolgirl crush.” She described the moment she met Numan around her 12th birthday: her dad worked at Warner Bros. which the Beggar’s Banquet label belonged to. and he arranged for her to meet Gary and get a single autographed. She remembered being so overcome she “couldn’t talk,” crying and telling him she “really loved him.”.
She added that she spoke with a school counselor about her future. telling them she didn’t need a career because she would “marry Gary Numan.” Looking back. she called their first date “really cute. ” and said as they saw each other more. her schoolgirl crush turned “quite quickly into real feelings.”.
Even then, O’Neill said she kept her expectations steady, remembering she thought: “This is really, really nice, he’s really, really friendly, and it’s lovely, but if it stops tomorrow I’m going to be all right about it.”
The story, as it’s been told from both sides, isn’t a straight line from celebrity to romance. It’s a longer arc—fan-meets-artist, years pass, a phone number is hunted down in 1992, a mother’s death sits at the center of the call, and a first date begins with a simple diner meal.
Gary Numan Gemma O’Neill The Times Cars singer Tubeway Army Little Chef fan event 1992 Raven Numan Persia Numan Echo Numan romance timeline