A woman who lost her husband in the Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand 2004 moved viewers to tears as she searched for love again on First Dates.
On Tuesday night’s episode of the Channel 4 show, 42-year-old Sally, an IT consultant from Leeds was coupled up with construction worker Andy on their blind date.
But it was Sally’s emotional tale about her late husband that left viewers in tears.
As the couple exchanged information about their past relationships over dinner, Sally shared that she was previously married but lost her husband, Jonathan, 15 years ago when the ocean hit their beachside huts in Thailand.
Viewers quickly took to social media to share their reaction to Sally’s story, willing for her to find love again with Andy.
As the scenes aired, viewers took to Twitter to reveal that her story had them crying and hoping for ‘Sally and Andy to fall hugely in love and live happily ever more’.
‘My goodness. First Dates tonight has me balling my eyes out what a horrible experience Sally had to go through and lost her husband in the Boxing Day tsunami. I hope she finds happiness tonight #FirstDates,’ added another.
Others openly hoped for her to find happiness again after she shared details of her experience in the natural disaster.
During the date, Sally described how in the early days of her marriage, she and her husband visited Thailand for a ‘dream holiday’.
‘Then Boxing Day came and we got up like we had every other morning,’ she revealed.
‘Jonathan went in the shower and I was laying on the bed and then I heard what I thought was thunder. I got up, walked to the window and all I saw was this black wall moving towards me. I screamed and everything went black.
‘I was knocked unconscious and when I came around I was in the water and all this water was rushing over me and I thought “Oh my god. What’s going on?”
‘This Thai man appeared from nowhere and pulled me out of the water, he pulled me on to the third storey of a hotel, that’s how high it went. Jonathan was missing at this point and I was obviously hopeful that he would be alive and we’d find our way back to each other.’
The devastating tsunamis killed an estimated 227,898 people in 14 countries across the Indian ocean on 26 December 2004.
Describing her late husband, Sally added: ‘Jonathan was everything to me, we just fell in love instantly.
‘He was just so good at making me feel good about myself.’
At the end of the date, Sally and Andy decided that they would love to see each other again.
Sally admitted that his positive reaction to her past helped her to make the decision.
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