17 Jan 2026
He might not have enjoyed the fairytale ending audiences were rooting for, but for Bailey Smith, the St Albans born-and-bred groom on the recent series of reality show Married at First Sight UK, there certainly aren’t any regrets.
“Even though it didn’t end in forever love, I still would have done it 10 times over, it was a great experience,” he reveals.
For the uninitiated, Channel 4’s MAFS offers single strangers the opportunity to be matched with their ideal partner by relationship gurus, only meeting them for the first time at their wedding ceremony.
The couples must then experience the ups and downs of living together to determine whether they have a future, supported throughout the process by a panel of experts, who help them overcome any challenges along the way.
After Bailey [real name David Bailey, the “Smith” is a pseudonym] was matched with aesthetics nurse Rebecca “Bec” Fenney, they navigated the latest series with barely a cross word between them. But although viewers watched them sail off into the sunset together, the couple sadly split some months later – much to the delight of the tabloids, who hate a happy ending.
Rather than dwell on the negative aspects of his experience, we wanted to take the opportunity to find out more about what he enjoyed from his 15 minutes of fame, and gain an insider’s perspective on the workings of the show.
Bailey, 37, who moved to Hove in his early thirties, is actually the nephew of St Albans City FC chairman Lawrence Levy.
“I used to play for their reserve team years ago,” he revealed. “This was just before Lawrence acquired them, and I’ve gone to watch St Albans since I was tiny.
“It’s a real community isn’t it, the football club? It represents St Albans really well. It’s just full of nice people and you see many of them have been going for years, it’s a great community club.”
He elaborated on his links to the city and fondly recalled some of his favourite local pubs: “I grew up in and around St Albans. I went to Sandringham School, and Beech Hyde Primary in Wheathampstead, and apart from living here [in Hove], I’ve never lived anywhere else.”
“I used to drink in Blackberry Jack [in Jersey Farm], and I probably had some of my first pints in there. As I got older I’d go into town, I like The Peahen, and The Crown near Clarence Park, but you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to pubs in St Albans aren’t you?
“I’ve still got family there, so I’m back regularly, and maybe one day I’ll live back in St Albans if I can afford a bloody house! It’s a beautiful place, a lovely place to live.”
Perhaps surprisingly, he wasn’t a regular viewer of Married at First Sight before tying the knot on the show: “I wasn’t really that clued up with the whole concept. I knew roughly what it was, but I wasn’t a fan. They actually reached out to me after I applied to appear on another TV show, and I’ve always been up for a challenge!
“I’m someone who says, ‘Why not just do it and have amazing experiences’, so it was that great opportunity to do something a bit out of the ordinary, but then also there was the idea of meeting your wife, and that was the main thing for me.
“I’m at a point in my life where I’m looking to get married, and I thought, you know what, let someone else match you up. They do their little checklists and you’re matched on loads of different criteria, and I like the idea of that.
“So I didn’t really have to consider it, just straight away I said, ‘Yeah I’d love to, it sounds like a great thing to do’.”
The ‘little checklists’ proved anything but, with a stringent vetting process to ensure he was partnered with the right person: “There’s a lot of talk about how they match people up, but it was vigorous, Iet me tell you that. I remember being sent questionnaires of about 300 questions on what I would do in a particular situation, and you also meet relationship specialists who really dive into what you like.
“I don’t have much of a physical type, so I was like, ‘Whatever really’, but they would say, ‘No, no, it’s really important to get these details right’. So it is very thorough.”
Did he think they did a good job with Rebecca, regardless of how the relationship ultimately ended? “On the wedding day I would have said no, and looking at how we both are now, I would still say we’re just not each other’s traditional type, as we’re very different people, but it did work.
“When we were on the show, everyone used to call us ‘mum and dad’ or the golden couple. It couldn’t have been better, it was a real love story, so I can’t fault the experts for that and the fact that we didn’t make it work on the outside was down to us.
“Our humour was the same and we had a lot of the same values, but if we’d met in a bar we wouldn’t have gone on another date or asked for each other’s numbers, if that makes sense, so maybe there are things you don’t see that these experts can.
“This is why the show is great, because you’re pulled out of your comfort zone in meeting someone that maybe you wouldn’t have given a go normally.
“It just shows that maybe you shouldn’t have such strict parameters about what you’re looking for. I’m on a dating site these days and I’m always looking for someone similar to me, but then maybe that’s not always what you need.”
Having successfully completed the audition process, Bailey then had to explain to his family and friends that he was marrying a complete stranger.
“They couldn’t believe it at the start. But my family all love the show, so they said it was so typical of me that I would be going on there. I don’t think anyone was too shocked, because they’ve always said I should go on TV. I’ve always been a bit different, if that makes sense.
“But they were all really supportive. They said, don’t tell a joke and get into trouble – because I joke all the time – so the main thing for me going in was that I had to be serious, because it’s about serious relationships and I just joke about everything!”
The strict security surrounding the series also had an impact: “The contracts are endless, let me tell you! Loads of NDAs (non-disclosure agreements), and you can only tell your [wedding] guests what’s happening after they’ve signed theirs and even then there’s a lot of secrecy behind it.
“I felt like I’d been dropped into a spy movie, especially when you come out of the show because it’s all been filmed and everything’s already happened. You really can’t tell anyone anything, which is crazy, even now because we’ve got a reunion coming up.
“The cat’s out of the bag with that one, but it’s going to be an eventful watch!”
Inevitably, the question most people want answered is now much of the show’s dialogue and scenes are natural, or whether elements are part-scripted: “It’s real, it’s 100 per cent natural, and no one ever told me to say anything.
“In fact, it’s actually the opposite. Sometimes I’d ask, ‘What do you want from me?’ and they won’t tell you, or say, ‘Well it has to come from you’. The extent of the production behind the scenes is maybe them saying, ‘How about you have a conversation with this person?’ or ‘You had a disagreement with this person, why don’t you go over and voice your feelings?’ but that’s about it. Sometimes they encourage conversation and disagreement, which is fair, but they definitely don’t put words in your mouth.”
There also aren’t any occasions when incidents are reshot for more dramatic effect: “No, no it’s not like we’d be emotional and crying and they say, ‘Cut, you’ve got to do that one more time’, we never have to redo an argument or an emotional scene, nothing like that.”
But surely so much happens off camera that there’s a need to fill in the gaps for the audience when they miss out on off-screen conversations?
“Yeah that’s a juggling act for the show, and something they struggle with, because a lot of the times we go out for drinks afterwards at a local pub, and that’s where the disagreements and the arguments happen.
“The show does discourage that though – you’re only allowed to go out in groups of four, you’ve got a curfew, your phones are tracked and you’re not allowed out of Wembley where we’re living, but inevitably people just break rules don’t they?
“So while some things do happen off camera, you’ve just got to be open and transparent with the production team about it. They’d come in the next day, early in the morning, and say, ‘Please don’t talk about your arguments until we’ve got a camera in front of you, so we can show the audience the full shebang,’ and I think some people struggled with that more than others.
“I was kind of open and happy to the highs and lows, but we didn’t have anything that bad happen anyway, so it was never really a worry about us and I was always happy to be open about what was happening.”
Support is available throughout the series from the show’s relationship experts – Paul C Brunson, Mel Schilling and Charlene Douglas – and although Bailey says he and Bec didn’t need as much as others during the process, that didn’t give them a free pass.
“You see a very small snippet of what goes on, each couple gets an hour’s advice, which means those days add up to 12, 14 hours, and when it’s not you receiving the advice, sometimes you feel like dozing off!
“But each couple definitely get the support they need, and it was real, because the experts really wanted these relationships to work. It helped some couple stay longer I think, because they were given the tools to go away and try to make it work, but obviously not all of them were able to do that.”
In the real world, most couples won’t receive this level of counselling until they reach crisis point, whereas the TV show provides it throughout the duration of the marriages.
“That was one of the appeals for me going in. You always think you’re right in an argument don’t you, but sometimes it’s nice to hear someone with a bit more expertise say, ‘Actually you’re not’ or validate your feelings somehow, do you know what I mean?”
Although he didn’t end up in a lifelong relationship because of the show, Bailey did forge some genuine friendships: “I’m still friends with loads of them and still see the guys regularly. I spent my New Year’s Eve with Dirvani and Reiss, I speak to Ashley, Leigh, Davide…
“That’s the other thing you don’t think about going in there, you make friends for life. It’s the little things you have to get used to now, what it’s like getting on the train and everyone’s staring at you, how you deal with people coming up to you. You have to learn to navigate that and the things you do.
“Look, there’s pros and cons to suddenly finding yourself in the public eye. I love it, it’s nice meeting new people and everyone’s super-friendly to me. But there have been times when it’s been tough – without saying too much – like after the reunion we just filmed.
“That was a really sad bit of filming for me, really tough, and I remember getting the train home the next day and I was really upset. But it was peak Saturday in London, and people were coming up to me and saying, ‘Oh my God I love your relationship’, ‘You two are great’, ‘You’re going to have loads of babies’. Probably 30 to 40 people came up to me on that day while I was just getting home, and by the time I got back I just wanted to lock the door and not speak to anyone.
“They’re the kind of things you don’t see, but it’s been really nice meeting new people.”
Away from MAFS, Bailey has been spending time with his daughter Bluebelle, and focusing on his craft beer company, promoting a new Sussex brew which he is hoping to introduce to some bars and pubs in and around St Albans.
“If some more TV comes knocking, I’d always be open to it, I’ve really enjoyed the experience.”
So what would he say to anyone else thinking of taking part in MAFS?
“Don’t do it! No, why not? You’ve got to have a bit of thick skin, you’ve got to be an open person and ready to literally bare everything to the cameras and the entire world afterwards. But as long as you’re open and up for a challenge, then I’d do it. Why not?
“I don’t regret it at all. Like I said, it was a great experience.”
