Newstalk ZB broadcaster Jack Tame, TVNZ journalist Mava Moayyed expecting first baby together

• Broadcaster Jack Tame announces wife Mava Moayyed is pregnant with couple’s first child.
• The couple were married at home in May last year, before holding a public wedding ceremony at Mudbrick vineyard on Waiheke Island in February.
• Moayyed, a former Sunday reporter and now TVNZ InDepth multimedia reporter, also has a son, Rumi.

Jack Tame is going to be a dad.

The Newstalk ZB host announced on air this morning that his wife Mava Moayyed, a fellow TVNZ broadcaster, is expecting their first child.

“Mava is due in February.” he told Saturday Morning with Jack Tame listeners.

“We’ve got a pram. We’ve got a cot. We’ve tossed around a few ideas for names, and I’ve been mesmerised by the images on the ultrasound screen.

“But even as I place my hand on my wife’s bump and feel something, someone, a bit of me shift and wriggle and kick, for now it’s all just magic.”

He knew “exhaustion and exasperation” lay ahead.

“But I also know the magic will only intensify. A new baby. A new generation. A new life. And the sense that mine will change forever.”

Jack Tame and Mava Moayyed pictured together on a holiday in New York.

Tame, who recently returned to New Zealand after covering the US election and then Apec in Peru, and Moayyed quietly tied the knot at home in Auckland in May last year, before celebrating their love with an intimate wedding on Waiheke Island in February.

Friends and family at the Mudbrick vineyard ceremony included Moayyed’s son Rumi, then aged 6, and broadcasting alumni including Miriama Kamo, Mark Crysell and Matty McLean.

He first guessed Moayyed was pregnant after noticing her thirst – and what it was for, Tame told listeners this morning.

“In the years I’ve known my wife, I can’t think of a time when she’s voluntarily consumed a glass of water … and yet here she was, all of a sudden, glugging back glass after glass of the good stuff.

“‘You’re pregnant’,” I said.”

Next, it was turning down dessert.

“One of my wife’s finest qualities is she never says no to dessert. And yet... no.

“‘You’re pregnant’, I said.”

Jack Tame has learnt a lot about his wife Mava Moayyed over the past six months, including how tough she is as she carries the baby they're expecting together in February. Photo / Supplied

It was amazing “how much a line on a stick can change your life”.

“When I was younger, I didn’t properly appreciate that sometimes life doesn’t go the way you expect it will. I have a lot of friends for whom getting pregnant and having children hasn’t been anything like our experience so far … I feel so fortunate, in that sense.”

He’d learnt a lot about his wife over the past six months, Tame said.

“She’s tough. Retching at the traffic lights one minute, and back on with her day the next.”

He’d also found himself thinking about his own parents.

“I’m one of four. Four! And my folks had no help. I can already see why people rate raising children as their greatest accomplishment.

“Although I understand it all in a theoretical sense, I’m not sure the full weight of impending fatherhood has yet sunken in, or will until our baby is born.”

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