Nadia Lim and Carlos Bagrie celebrate 20 years of love and success

Life is lived at pace for Nadia and Carlos, but they’re happy to take a pause to reflect on the momentous 20th anniversary of when they first met. Photo / Emily Chalk

Writer Sophie Neville chats to the beloved Nadia’s Farm stars as they celebrate an amazing 20 years together. Sharing their love story, the famous foodie and her farmer husband reflect on their extraordinary life together and how spending time apart has rekindled their spark.

Figuring out what to do in life isn’t always an easy task for a teenager, but when Nadia Lim and Carlos Bagrie met as students 20 years ago, they found in each other someone whose vision for the future was as clear as their own.

Straight away, the determined young couple began laying the building blocks for their remarkable life together, culminating in where they find themselves today – parents to three gorgeous boys, custodians of an extraordinary South Island farm, recently awarded Officers of the New Zealand Order of Merit and more in love than ever. Individually, these go-getters were always going to be impressive, but together they’re a force to be reckoned with and as they reflect on their epic two-decade journey, Nadia and Carlos are adamant none of it would have been possible without the other at their side.

“We’re stronger together,” says the Kiwi food star, who was only 19 when she first laid eyes on Invercargill-raised Carlos. “We’ve been able to work towards our goals together and share the journey. I’ll always be grateful I met Carlos so young because we’ve grown up alongside each other and I love him more now than ever.”

It’s hard to believe 20 years have passed since they met on a night out at Dunedin’s student haunt the Captain Cook Tavern in 2005, yet they’ve packed more into those years than most could in a lifetime. A MasterChef New Zealand win for Nadia at 24 made her a household name virtually overnight, followed by a series of bestselling cookbooks and the co-founding of successful meal kit business My Food Bag. Its subsequent part sale led to a bold move south and into farming for the couple – who are parents to Bodhi, 8, River, 6, and 2-year-old Arlo – with a hit reality TV show, Nadia’s Farm, following their exploits. In the latest New Year Honours list, they were made Officers of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the food industry, while Carlos was also commended for his contributions to rural industries. It seems there’s nothing this couple can’t turn their hand to.

Twenty years have passed since Carlos and Nadia met. Photo / Emily Chalk

Unwavering mutual support

“It’s been a big couple of decades, that’s for sure,” says Carlos, sitting down to chat at their historic farmhouse on Royalburn Station, their sprawling property near Queenstown. “I couldn’t imagine doing any of this without Nadia. We’ve been together our whole adult lives and consequently, we see the world through a similar lens. I feel incredibly lucky to have her.”

Life is lived at pace for this couple, but they’re happy to take a pause to reflect on the momentous 20th anniversary of when they first met. As with all relationships, there have been ups and downs along the way, but at the heart of their union is unwavering mutual support, love and respect, with a good dose of laughter thrown in. And Nadia, 39, can’t help but giggle as they reminisce over their “how we met” story.

“I remember that night so clearly,” tells Nadia, who was on the dance floor of the packed pub when she spotted a handsome young Carlos at the bar. Doing her best to avoid the amorous advances of a bleary-eyed fellow student, she smiled and waved. “I was like, ‘Oh, I like the look of him’! He was very good-looking.”

Carlos, however, thought this beautiful young woman couldn’t possibly be waving at him, so he ignored her. She tried again and this time Carlos decided to take his chance and say hi, unwittingly introducing himself to his future wife and rescuing her from the gaze of the young man who wasn’t picking up on her signals.

The couple might hail from completely different backgrounds, but they hit it off immediately. Photo / Australian Women's Weekly

“I was so relieved when he came over!” recalls Nadia, who blushes as she admits she later invited him back to her student hostel for a hot chocolate. “We ended up chatting for hours. It was totally innocent – I was only thinking about the hot chocolate, I promise!”

She jokes that her first one-night stand turned into anything but a one-night stand. “We were pretty much together from that night on.”

A second date over sushi followed a few days later, when the love-struck pair both felt quietly assured they’d met the person they were going to spend their life with. They might hail from completely different backgrounds, with nutrition and dietetics student Nadia growing up in Auckland and Malaysia, while Carlos, who studied marketing and psychology, was raised on a farm in the deep south, but they hit it off immediately.

“We talked about our future on that second date,” says Nadia. “Carlos said something along the lines of, ‘You know, if we end up being together long term, I’m just letting you know that I plan on going back into farming one day'. And my tongue-in-cheek reply was something like, ‘Okay, sounds good, but just to let you know, I’m going to write cookbooks and have a cooking show on TV called Food in the Nude'. So we were both pretty clear from the outset what we wanted and we needed to check if the other person was up for that.”

On board with each other’s dreams, the next big milestone was meeting each other’s families. Carlos took Nadia to his family farm where he concocted a plan to leave her alone with his parents, John and Virginia, for a few hours. “It was the first big test,” says Nadia with a laugh, and adds one of the things she loves most about Carlos is his strong family values. “Luckily, I passed with flying colours.”

Nadia delighted in introducing Carlos to her family, including mum Julie and dad Ken. Photo / Australian Women's Weekly

And Nadia delighted in introducing Carlos to her family, including mum Julie and dad Ken, who sadly died in 2014 after a battle with cancer. She also delighted in introducing farm boy Carlos to a more varied diet. Nadia, whose dad Ken was Chinese-born Malaysian, was already a passionate and talented cook.

“I made him soft-boiled eggs with buttered toast soldiers and Marmite for breakfast every day before his lectures, then I’d cook him dinner every night too,” tells Nadia. “I’d make Thai green curry and Malaysian rendang curry, and he was blown away because he’d never had spice before. He’d never had blue cheese, never tried feijoas, didn’t eat mushrooms and didn’t drink red wine. Then all of a sudden he was a red wine and blue cheese connoisseur!”

Built on give and take

The pair also bonded over their work ethic and only two years after they met, they bought their first rental property. “We were only 21, but worked our arses off to be able to do that,” explains Nadia. “We were both very motivated and we knew that we wanted to work real hard and get ahead early on. It was fun doing it together.”

Nadia often wonders what might have transpired if she and Carlos hadn’t both been in that bar that night because it’s almost impossible to imagine life without her husband’s unwavering love and support. Their relationship, they say, has always been built on give and take. When Nadia won MasterChef, Carlos gave up his corporate job to help the budding food star build her brand.

When Nadia won MasterChef, Carlos gave up his corporate job. Photo / Australian Women's Weekly

“I’ve always been so proud of Nadia and I could see how much potential she had to really grow this thing,” says Carlos. “She’s a special person because as well as being so driven and motivated, she’s incredibly kind and generous, and those traits don’t always go hand in hand. And despite all the things she’s achieved, she hasn’t changed. She’s exactly the same person she was before all this. She’s incredibly humble.”

While Nadia worked in a restaurant kitchen and took on catering jobs, Carlos toiled behind the scenes on branding and marketing. The next few years consisted of hard work, long hours and little financial reward. But they learned fast that working together was something they loved, and the pair have successfully blended their personal and professional worlds seamlessly since.

“Neither of us had a regular paying job, so we were just getting by on the catering jobs and cooking demonstrations that I was doing at the time, and fortunately, my parents let us live rent free at their house for six months,” says Nadia, who’d been warned she had only a small window to capitalise on her reality-TV fame. “It was hard, but it was exciting too, to be creating something alongside Carlos. I was told that pretty soon I’d be old news, I’d be someone’s fish and chip wrapper, so I needed to make hay while the sun shone. That really spurred us on.”

Somehow, the couple managed to find time to get married along the way, tying the knot on the Karikari Peninsula in the Far North in 2012. A year later, they launched My Food Bag, an ambitious food-kit delivery service. With Nadia the face of the brand and in charge of recipe development, Carlos was involved in the marketing and business with their co-founders, Kiwi entrepreneurs Cecilia and James Robinson and Theresa Gattung, turning it into a hugely successful enterprise. Its partial sell-down five years later was a pivotal crossroads for the couple and their two little boys. They could have chosen to retire at that point, but taking the easy path was never on the table.

Nadia and Carlos tied the knot on the Karikari Peninsula in the Far North in 2012. Photo / Australian Women's Weekly

Farm to plate

Instead, they took an enormous leap into the unknown, becoming the new owners of Royalburn Station, a 485ha farm between Arrowtown and Cardrona. Carlos’ dream of returning to the land was realised and together they turned their attention to every aspect of food production. Over the past five years, they’ve transformed the traditional farming operation into a fully diversified farm-to-plate model, which now has 32 staff, 10,000 lambs, almost 9000 chickens and millions of bees. They have an on-farm abattoir and butchery, their own beer, Swifty, and have recently become partners in a Queenstown grocery store, McKibbon’s, to run alongside their Arrowtown farm shop. To say it’s been a lot of work would be a gross understatement. In fact, nothing could have prepared the couple for the intensity of the past five years since they took it on and though they have no regrets, the workload has pushed them to their limits at times.

“Sometimes now when things are particularly crazy, we look at each other and go, ‘We could be sitting by a pool somewhere with nothing to do’!” says Nadia. “But we don’t actually mean it because if you can do something and you’ve got something to contribute, you should. We know people who have all the money in the world and don’t have purpose, and do I look at their life and think they’ve got it better than us? No.”

Adds Carlos, “I believe that everybody needs purpose, and for me to be happy, I need focus and to create things. Neither of us would have been happy doing nothing.”

And amongst the hard work and extreme realities of running a farm, nothing can take away from the joy of seeing their children thrive on the land, including little Arlo who was born at home on Royalburn in February 2023. Raising their boys in this rural paradise means outdoor adventures and discovery every day, with lambs to be fed, ducklings to play with, eeling in the streams and vegetables eaten straight from the garden. And last year, when Carlos was awarded the prestigious Nuffield farming scholarship, it was Nadia who encouraged him to go – no small decision when it meant she was left behind at home for months at a time with their three energetic boys. “That’s how we’ve always worked,” says Nadia. “We’ve made sacrifices to help each other succeed. This was an amazing opportunity for him.”

Reigniting the spark

A surprising byproduct of their time apart was the fact it opened both their eyes to the need to nourish their relationship. Life since they moved to the farm had been so full, so busy and at times incredibly stressful, that they’d failed to notice some distance creep between them. Nadia admits now that by the time Carlos went away, she was depleted and exhausted, and Carlos was feeling the weight of responsibility with the farm and business interests. Both had little-to-no time for themselves outside of kids and work and unsurprisingly, there hadn’t been any space to work on their relationship.

Nothing can take away from the joy of seeing the couple's children thrive on the land. Photo / Emily Chalk

“Making time for the relationship is something you need to be conscious of and purposeful with, and that’s very challenging with young kids,” admits Carlos.

Adds Nadia, “We fell into that rut of thinking, ‘We’ve always been together, so we’ll always be together’ and started taking each other for granted.”

But the time apart offered a much-needed reminder of just how much they meant to each other. With Carlos on the other side of the world for much of 2024, the time difference meant they took to email to keep in touch. Writing to each other allowed them to share their feelings in a way they hadn’t for years. For Carlos, stepping away from the environment that had consumed his every waking moment was crucial, and he returned with a renewed determination to give more time and effort to the people who mean the most – Nadia and their three boys.

“It gave me an opportunity to look outside in as opposed to inside out,” he reflects. “And it’s made me be much more considered with how I am as a husband and a father. Everything has changed since I got back. We’re a lot more honest and a lot more candid with each other, and I’m much more present at home. The relationship we have now feels a lot more like the relationship we had 10 years ago, pre-children. Now I’m genuinely trying my best and being super-honest.

“Communication is probably first and foremost where it begins and ends, and then making time for each other. It’s about remembering those little signs of love and intimacy. It doesn’t really cost anything – it could just be cutting a flower from the garden and putting it in a vase with a little note. It’s just the simplest thing, but it goes a long way.”

Nadia and Carlos discussed counselling, but in the end, it was the long emails sent across time zones that reignited the spark.

“I had butterflies in my stomach when I went to pick him up from the airport,” tells Nadia, who has also started prioritising time for herself, with regular exercise and the occasional trip away. “We’re much more affectionate with each other again, we remember to compliment each other and just take the time to acknowledge how much we’re each doing. It’s made the biggest difference.”

Nadia even took to writing Carlos poetry. In one of her odes, she references a very special time in the couple’s early relationship when they would escape their student flats and head south to camp on Carlos’ family land. “It was so quiet and peaceful and incredibly basic,” she says. “We put a bed in an old storage unit that was filled with junk, but it was just us and nature and we loved it.”

Carlos would hunt rabbits and hares, they’d catch eels and forage, Nadia would cook and together they mapped out their future.

Carlos is incredibly proud of his city-raised wife for embracing the farming life. Photo / Emily Chalk

“We’d stay as long as we could in this basic little storage unit and try and live off the land. In the daytime, Carlos was building a maimai for duck shooting, at night-time there was nothing to do except make a meal, eat and talk. It was the ultimate simple life and it really cemented our relationship because we got to know each other so well during those times.”

Twenty years on and they’re looking ahead with optimism to the next 20. They’re confident they’ll still be on the farm, still working long days, but of course doing it as a team.

“It’s full on,” admits Carlos. “But the reward is working together in creating these things.”

He’s incredibly proud of his city-raised wife for embracing the farming life with such gusto.

“Nadia’s got an incredible food knowledge. And when she looks at something growing, she’s not thinking about how it harvests – she’s thinking about how it tastes. She’s very aware of seasons and about growing systems. It’s like she instinctively knows what’s a good idea and what’s not when it comes to growing things. Like she can just almost feel it.”

So does that mean self-confessed townie Nadia is a real farmer?

“If we define a farmer as someone with overalls and a straw hat and chasing the sheep around the paddock, then no, I don’t put her there. But as someone who understands the variance in nature, the ecology and how things grow, harvest and eat, I think she’s a perfect definition of a farmer.”

Carlos says of all their years together, the past 12 months have been his best. Reinvesting in their relationship has been the biggest reward from the year that’s been.

“We’ve faced adversity, but we’ve also displayed the most resilience and a desire to put each other first. We’ve got three beautiful children who we love so much, and they really are central to our focus. Nadia is an incredible mother.”

And as they turn 40 this year – Carlos in July and Nadia in December – Nadia says any wobbles about getting older are long gone. She’s simply happy to be where she is with Carlos and their three wonderful sons.

“I say bring it on to turning 40,” she enthuses. “I’m excited about the next decade because as long as I’ve got Carlos and the kids, then I’ll be happy. Anything else is a bonus.” AWW

Hair and makeup by Deirdre Read · Styling by Lulu Wilcox