Kate Garraway found 'a new way to be in love' with husband amid COVID-19 recovery

Watch: Kate Garraway dedicates award win to husband Derek Draper

Kate Garraway has confessed that her relationship with husband Derek Draper has changed in the wake of his long road to recovery from COVID-19.

Draper was hospitalised in March 2020 and spent much of the year in an induced coma, before being allowed to return home in April last year — still requiring significant care from his wife.

Read more: Kate Garraway hoping for "a miracle" in Derek's recovery

"I’m not sure that we’ve ever fallen out of love, but I think a new path is emerging, a new way to be in love," Garraway told the Mail on Sunday's You magazine.

She added: "He puts huge trust in me. He just says 'whatever you think', which is wonderful, but I do get quite tearful about it. I think: 'God, I hope I’m worthy of that trust'.

"But I’ve got his back. That is a relationship in itself, isn’t it? How many times do couples have doubts about each other?

"That’s a positive thing to come out of this, to have that certainty of each other. He and I are very close."

Read more: Kate Garraway says husband had health scare over Christmas

The 54-year-old presenter won a National Television Award last year for documentary Finding Derek, in which she explored the troubled year in which Draper was in hospital.

She is currently working on a follow-up, which will focus on the subsequent attempts to bring Draper back into a more normal life, including an emotional family theatre trip in December.

Garraway said: "It’s an emotional rollercoaster, but if it is gruelling for me, it’s even more so for him, I’m sure, because he’s living with it.

"As much as it impacts on the children and myself, being in his body must be so much worse."

Read more: Kate Garraway reveals FaceTime call with Derek after NTA win

The presenter was recognised with an MBE in the New Year Honours list, but confessed she has "bittersweet" feelings about receiving it.

"To have something so lovely and rewarding at a time when things are grim, personally… and obviously, what you’d like to be doing is going to receive it together," she said.

Garraway recently took over from Piers Morgan as the host of in-depth interview programme Life Stories, which is currently airing on Thursdays on ITV.

Watch: Kate Garraway reads poem about love at Christmas carol service