Experts Mel and John from MAFS Australia with who they are married to

Are the MAFS Australia experts married? A look inside the love lives of the relationship gurus

John’s wife is famous!


The experts on Married at First Sight Australia know exactly how to advise the couples on how to keep their relationships in tact and after two longs months after watching all this advice unfurl, it’s time to take a closer look into the experts’ own relationships.

You’d think they’d all be in happy relationships given they advice they dish out to the cast members and for some of them, they have been married for years and have children with their partners. So, if you’re just that little bit nosey or are keen to know a bit more about the experts we only see twice a week, here is a look inside the relationships of the MAFS Australia experts.

Melanie Schilling

Melanie Schilling joins the panel experts on both MAFS Australia and UK and she is married. The 51-year-old specialises in human behaviour and performance and has been a therapist and business consultant for the past 20 years.

Mel has been married to her husband, Gareth Brisbane, for almost three years. Gareth, who is originally from Northern Ireland, runs an online betting business and he met Mel while they were both living in Australia.

“I was single for my entire thirties,” Mel told OK! Magazine. “I wasn’t interested in anyone. I was busy travelling the world, and working overseas, I was all about building my business and just living a great life.”

Mel and Gareth were in their late thirties when they met on eHarmony. They first began their relationship as a long distance one and didn’t physically meet for six weeks. “We were communicating every day and it was mostly email and text. I couldn’t talk to him on the phone at first, because I couldn’t understand his accent!”, Mel explained.

The couple are parents to their daughter, Maddie. Mel gave birth when she was 42 years old, with the help of IVF, and they moved to Brighton in 2021 to be closer to filming for MAFS UK.

John Aiken

The other married person on the panel of MAFS Australia experts is John Aiken. He and his wife, Kelly, met 17 years ago after he saw her on TV in New Zealand.

Kelly was a widow when they met after her first husband died in a canoeing accident. Despite liking John, she kept herself guarded because of what had happened.

“She is someone I am very grateful that I met,” John told 9Honey. “She had a lot of people around her that were very protective and didn’t want her to jump into anything else.”

John would frequently fly between Auckland and Wellington when he and Kelly were dating and they went on to get married in 2007. Following their marriage, they moved to Australia and they have two children together.

Alessandra Rampolla

Alessandra Rampolla is the only single one on the panel of experts on MAFS Australia, but she was married. The clinical sexologist was married for four years before divorcing her husband.

It has been reported her marriage to John Hernandez broke down because she wanted to stay in Argentina to have a family, but he wanted to go back to Puerto Rico to be closer to his family.

Alessandra has spoken openly about her marriage and said her divorce has helped her “understand what some of these couples will go through.”

“I did everything possible for us to be happy together and I don’t regret anything I did,” she said. “There was no drama between us, we love each other and we are friends but at a certain point, life just took us on a different path.”

For all the latest Married at First Sight Australia news and gossip, iconic memes and the best quizzes, like The Holy Church of MAFS on Facebook.

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Featured image credit via Instagram @mel_schilling1 and @johnaikenlive.