PETER WRIGHT and his wife Jo have revealed the remarkable love story behind them becoming darts’ biggest power couple.
The duo split for 13 years after the birth of their first daughter Naomi in 1993.
Just under a decade later, the youngster wanted to get in touch with her darting dad and it prompted Jo to search for him on the Professional Darts Corporation website – and then knock on his door out of the blue.
Once reunited, Wright’s career boomed. Their daughter Naomi came up with his multi-coloured mohican hair idea before he played in his first UK Open in 2005.
Hairdresser Jo then continued his wacky designs and has been by his side as a manager throughout his rise to the top of the sport, as one of the most recognisable players of all-time.
Jo revealed on the ‘Tops and Tales’ podcast: “So when I was 18 and Peter was 22, we worked in a holiday camp in Lowestoft called Gunton Hall.
“That’s part of Warners. I was a waitress and Peter worked in the kitchen.
“I found him sitting under a tree when I came out from work one day, kind of waiting for me.
“We had our first daughter in 1993 and then we split up for 13 years. Well, we kind of had like three on-and-off relationships back then.
“We had no contact, nothing. I found him when the daughter was nine on her laptop, she’d been looking for him and searching for him.
“So obviously you keep an eye on your kids, especially at nine-years-old, what they’re doing on social media and stuff like that.
“It’s nothing like it is nowadays. It was just, you just Google it online.
“I thought, well, I better go and find him before she did, just in case he doesn’t want to see her and stuff.
“But it took me four years to find him. When I did find him, I had my own salon by then.
“So I was sitting in the salon and I found profiles from the PDC, a picture of him on there and then there was like some details on, a couple of telephone numbers.
“I found the first one, no luck, found the second one, which was actually someone in the PDC office at the time, deleting all the old profiles, which was, he was one of them.
“So if I hadn’t have found him on there that night, I wouldn’t have found him.
“So from there, the lady from the PDC, don’t even know what her name is or who she was, gave me his last known address.
“I went and knocked on the door. And I’m guessing, if you don’t mind me saying, Peter, that was probably the last thing you were expecting.”
Peter replied: “Yes. Just a bit.”
Jo even watched Peter play on TV in the 1995 Lakeside Championship.
He then sported his natural brown hairstyle and even as an Englishman, not a Scot which he later chose as his nation in the PDC due to his mum being from Scotland.
Jo continued: “Well, there was big confusion to go with it all because I was married and Peter had a girlfriend.
“And a month later, I had no husband and Peter had a new girlfriend – me.
“We knew how good Peter was at darts as well.
“So like getting back together again, and like you think, over all these years.
“Because I actually did watch him at home with my family when he was in the Lakeside, 1995.
“So we were watching him. Even his daughter was like crawling in front of the TV watching him, and we were all talking about him. So that’s as close as we actually saw to him.
“And then when we got together and stuff, it’s like you could have been so much more if we’d have stayed together. You know, he had all the support then as well.
“But he was kind of a bit defiant back in the day. So it was his way or no way.”
Peter added: “Yeah, I think I’m, well, I suppose I think I know everything, but I don’t.
“So we kind of think that although what we’ve done now and what we’ve got, but we missed all them years where we could have had more.
“I could have been challenging Phil Taylor at that time or something like that. I could have been there with Dennis Priestley, Phil Taylor.”
After Wright’s second World Championship win in 2022, just a few days later he walked daughter Naomi down the aisle with the Sid Waddell Trophy proudly placed on the head table.
