Harry Aikines-Aryeetey has been married to Lauren Cooper since October 2019. They have one daughter, Aubreรฉ-Isla, who was born in September 2020.
That is close to the full extent of what the Gladiators star has made public about his marriage, and it has stayed that way through the busiest twelve months of his television career.
Aikines-Aryeetey, who turned 38 last month, is open about most of his life. He has discussed the back brace he wore as a teenager and the knee injury that cost him a full series of Gladiators. No public comment from his wife has ever been reported.
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The wedding, and the friends who stood up with him
Harry announced the marriage himself. On 19 October 2019 he posted wedding photos to Instagram, captioned “Mr & Mrs AA.” Athletes and old friends filled the comments.
The Sun has reported the month and year but noted that very little about the day itself has been made public. The paper also said details of Lauren’s own life and professional background have never been published. How the couple met has not been reported either.
He has given one detail about the day, and it came in an interview about something else. Talking to the Big Issue in January this year about the friendships he formed in athletics as a boy, he said: “My best friends to this day, my best men at my wedding, the guys I see weekly, are the guys I met on the track.” He started training at 13.
What Harry has said about keeping his family private
He explained his thinking to WalesOnline in December 2024, though he framed it around his daughter rather than his wife:
“It’s important to have that moment of downtime, not to have a camera in my face, and also my child might not want to be an influencer. She gets involved in some of my videos, which is quite funny. I cook with her and we play games together. There are some interesting points about being a parent, you want to keep those things private because it’s your journey.”
He posts family pictures fairly often. His Instagram account, now past 330,000 followers, carries photographs from a trip to Marrakesh in April 2026 and a family holiday in Malta in July 2026. Lauren appears in several of them and is almost never named in the captions. The Malta post was captioned “Malta dump part 2.”
The BBC’s profile page for him takes a similar line, mentioning only that he lives with “his wife Lauren and their daughter Aubree-Isla, who he says is already quicker than him by over 5 metres.”
The injury, then Strictly
In 2024 he ruptured the tendon below his kneecap while training, which ruled him out of the entire second series of Gladiators. He told Entertainment Daily in October last year that the injury “put a strain on our family and put a strain on my well-being.” It is one of the few times he has linked his home life to something going wrong.
He recovered in time to dance in the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special in December 2024, then joined the main series the following autumn with Karen Hauer. He went out on 9 November 2025, the sixth celebrity eliminated, after a dance-off against La Voix and Aljaลพ ล korjanec.
Where Nitro’s wife has been seen since
Before that run, Lauren had barely been photographed with him. Press agencies had covered her at a single event, a restaurant launch in Soho in April 2025.
Four public appearances have followed:
- 16 November 2025, a screening of Wicked: For Good at the Vue in Leicester Square, with their daughter. A PA Images photographer named all three of them in the caption.
- 17 November 2025, a HELLO! Magazine shoot with Harry and Aubreรฉ-Isla, in which he called himself a helicopter parent. The quotes in that piece were all his.
- 22 March 2026, a matinee of The Hunger Games: On Stage at the Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre.
- 18 June 2026, day three of Royal Ascot.
There is a small oddity in the picture desks’ handling of her. Getty Images alone has used three versions of her name across those events: “wife Lauren” in April 2025, “Lauren Cooper” that November, and “Lauren Aikines” at Ascot in June. There is no interview or public statement to check any of them against.
Harry has kept working through all of it. He returned for the third series of Gladiators, which aired earlier this year, and played for the World XI at Soccer Aid at the London Stadium on 31 May. Royal Ascot in June is the most recent public appearance the two have been photographed at together.
