I’m A Celebrity star GK Barry’s famous girlfriend revealed

GK Barry has jetted to the jungle. As part of this year’s I’m A Celebrity line-up, the social media star will be spending the next few weeks in Australia, where she’ll get to know her fellow campmates, including Coleen Rooney, Tulisa, and Danny Jones.  

Ahead of ITV’s launch show on Sunday night, GK – aka Grace Eleanor Keeling – was tagged in the sweetest post by her girlfriend and professional footballer, Ella Rutherford, who called GK her “little jungle babe.” 

Here’s what we know about GK and Ella’s blossoming relationship, which began over the summer…

GK and Ella’s adorable first date

The duo have become closer than ever, with Ella appearing on GK’s podcast, Saving Grace in September. After GK asked Ella how she’d felt after their first meeting, the striker gave the sweetest response. “I couldn’t even skip at that point but I skipped home,” she said. 

Giving listeners some context, GK recalled: “I open the door, she waddles to my front door, I go ‘hello’.” 

Continuing the story, Ella revealed that she’d felt “great” after crossing paths with GK. “I thought, life’s turned around here. My mum kept saying to me – funny story – I hadn’t cracked a smile in two weeks, so I’d just come out of surgery and mum caught me smiling at my phone, which is quite embarrassing for me. 

“She – and everyone in the house, actually – were after me, and doing everything to try to make me happy, feeding me and playing with my hair. Nothing was working and then all of a sudden you came along.” 

They’re each other’s biggest cheerleaders 

GK and Ella are extremely supportive of one another, with the podcaster donning her very own ‘Rutherford’ shirt to watch her girlfriend train in September. 

Likewise, Ella has been cheering GK on, after she entered the jungle. Sharing a clip of one of Grace’s first trials, she captioned it: “The nation is gonna fall in love, just like I did.” 

In another post, Ella also revealed that she and her friends had donned custom GK shirts to tune into episodes of I’m A Celebrity. 

GK has called Ella the ‘love of her life’

It took a while for GK to reveal the identity of her famous girlfriend on her podcast and originally nicknamed her “eyelashes” when talking about their relationship. 

© Instagram

“So whenever I refer to eyelashes, I am talking about the love of my life,” she teased in an episode. “I’m in love. And yeah, it has been three weeks, but that’s fine. That’s absolutely fine. She came to me like a dream, and I was obsessed.”

Ahead of her stint on I’m A Celebrity, GK quipped that she’d bought Ella a cardboard cut-out of herself, so she wouldn’t feel like she was away for too long.