Coleen Nolan has confessed that she “cried her eyes out” when her ex-husband Shane Richie expressed his desire to take their young sons on a trip with his new partner.

The pop star and the EastEnders actor, who tied the knot in 1990 and have two sons together, Jake and Shane Jr, ended their marriage in 1997 after Coleen found out about Shane’s affair.

In her autobiography published in 2009, Coleen revealed that Shane was in Manchester performing as Danny Zuko in Grease at the time, leaving her and their children in the south. This is when she began to suspect something was amiss.

Writing in her book, the Loose Women panelist said: “At the after-show party, I can distinctly remember examining this one girl. There were loads of people there but she just stood out. She had really long dark hair and was wearing a skin-tight white dress.

“Well, it must have been female intuition because that turned out to be the girl Shane had an affair with.”

Shane Richie and Coleen Nolan married in 1990 (Image: Getty Images)
On Loose Women: The Podcast, Coleen shared that it was only six months to a year later when Shane made a request that left her in tears. This came after a podcast listener wrote in saying their ex-husband wanted to take their children away with his new flame, reports Lancs Live.

Coleen explained: “It happened to me, I remember when me and Shane first split up and obviously, he was with the girl that we had split up because of, and it was about six months, about a year down the line and he wanted to go to Florida with her and the boys. They hadn’t even met her at this point.

“So I arranged for the boys to meet her with me, and she came to the house, and we chatted. Obviously it hurts you, it hurt me, you’re thinking, ‘what if my kids end up falling in love…because she’s going to be the good guy and she’ll spoil them because she wants them to love her and all of this’.

“But then I thought, ‘A, it doesn’t matter what she does, they’ll never love her as much as they love me, I’m their mum’ and secondly, I don’t want the boys to feel guilty and feel guilty going, that they’ve betrayed me. I saw them looking at me like, I knew they really wanted to go to Disney but they’re looking at me and I’m like, ‘No, you’re going to have the best time’.

Coleen has three children, Jake, Ciara and Shane Jr (Image: Coleen Nolan/Instagram)
“Don’t get me wrong, they went off, cried my eyes out, fine. What I did is I took myself away for two weeks with a friend, I went and had a lovely time kid free, and it was great.”

After separating from Shane, Coleen found happiness again with musician Ray Fensome, with whom she shares her daughter Ciara. They tied the knot in 2007, but their marriage ended in divorce in 2018.

Coleen was more recently in a relationship with Michael Jones after the pair met on Tinder in 2021. However, they split in late 2024.

Shane has since married his wife Christie in 2007. The pair are settled in Surrey and are raising their children Mackenzie Blue, Lolita Bell, and Romani-Skye.