Rod Stewart and Rachel Hunter. Photos / Getty Images, Alex Burton
Rod Stewart and Rachel Hunter. Photos / Getty Images, Alex Burton
Could a Stewart/Hunter family reunion be on the cards in Aotearoa in just over a week?
Rocking Rod Stewart is heading to New Zealand for concerts in Dunedin, Napier and Auckland.
His ex-wife, NZ’s own Rachel Hunter, 53, is back here with daughter Renee Stewart, hosting a series of wellness and yoga classes and retreats.
Whether Hunter will be here from April 5 for his first concert is unsure, but Spy understands Renee will be, and is going to Hawke’s Bay — most probably on his jet — to watch her dad.
Hunter’s next wellness commitment is not until April 29 in India. She’s hosting a week-long session of meditation, breathwork, yoga, and sightseeing at the Neeleshwar Hermitage Resort in Kerala on the Malabar Coast.
It will be followed by a week-long “magical tour” in Jaipur, Agra and Delhi. Guests are treated to hosted yoga classes by Hunter, cycling, cooking demonstrations and shopping.
But she’ll want to be back in the US to see her first grandchild. Son Liam’s Californian partner, Nicole Artukovich, is due to give birth in May. The couple have recently returned to the US after spending six months in the UK and Europe where Liam played ice hockey.
This week, Hunter and Renee went to Dominic Harvey’s podcast studio in Victoria Park, where his dog, Kanye, caused hilarity, humping his toys.
Hunter told Harvey she is excited about her grandchild’s arrival but isn’t sure if she will be in the delivery room.
Dominic Harvey and Rachel Hunter. Photo / Renee Stewart
She also revealed she is penning her memoirs — one of many revelations on Harvey’s podcast Runners Only, which launches tomorrow.
And she admitted to never having read her ex-husband’s book, putting it down to her trusting him implicitly. She did address an extract, where he talks about the “poo in the bed scare” on their first intimate occasion on a boat — the stain ended up being chocolate.
Hunter’s reflections on her former husband — now married to English model Penny Lancaster — are sweet. She talks to Harvey about “Daddy issues” and being so young at the time of their marriage (she was 21, he was 45) that she needed to find her true self.
Stewart wasn’t the first rocker she dated — she was with musician Kip Winger before they met. And did she date Robbie Williams? What about the reported altercation between Stewart and Williams over her in the late 2000s? Hunter’s answers and intonations to Harvey are curious.
Hunter says she may have been in love a couple of times, and thinks she’s been engaged a couple of times since her marriage to Stewart (including to Canadian ice hockey player Jarret Stoll).
She says Hollywood psychic Tyler Henry told her more than five years ago that she would be single for at least five years — and she still is.
Hunter also reveals why she doesn’t have her famous old mag covers hanging up, her reflections on doing Playboy, her lifestyle changes after her mother Janine passed, Botox and surgery.
And to fit in with the theme of the podcast, Hunter talks about how her modelling career started at 16 when she was discovered by a scout while out running on Milford beach.
She reveals how she had to hound the late former All Black and agent Andy Haden — convincing him the same formula he applied to representing the rugby players would suit her international career — and how the Hadens then became her second family.
