Kate Garraway has thanked the NHS staff who are “battling” to aid her husband’s recovery from coronavirus as she said that having her birthday without him present was “always going to be a tough one”.
The TV presenter, who turned 53 on Monday, said that health service workers are keeping her husband Derek Draper “still with us”.
Draper, 52, a former lobbyist and political adviser, was taken to hospital at the end of March.
Garraway added: “So yesterday was always going to be a tough one, first birthday in 16 years without Derek, so for the kids and I, his absence was very present.
“But we resolved to do what I think we are all having to do at the moment aren’t we, treasure and be grateful for the love around us, however distanced we are from it.”
The Good Morning Britain host shared the message alongside a picture of her husband taken while he was editor of a student newspaper and a birthday cake she had got from “strangers”.
She added that NHS workers are “battling every day to inch him towards recovery”.
She thanked her “friends” at ITV who had sent chocolate for her children and “uplifting smellies for me” and her “mates who dropped off food, posh teabags and milk and made me smile at silliness”.
Garraway added that her husband is “a great believer in the healing power of silliness”.
She also thanked her “amazing” family and her husband’s friends “who sent me messages of fun times they have had with him”.
Garraway revealed last month that her husband was taken to intensive care as he was in a critical condition with Covid-19.
She has been providing regular updates on her husband’s condition to coincide with the Clap for Carers on Thursday evenings and last week revealed that he is “still with us, but what a battle it is”.
Garraway and Draper married in 2005 and have a daughter and a son.