CRADLE snatcher. Paedophile.

The name-calling came fast and furious.

Forty-one-year-old Terence Cao was marrying a, gulp, teenager, screamed the headline in a local magazine some weeks back.

And netizens were quick to react and slam him for doing so.

Aiyoh, not true lah, according to the local actor.

'Marriage yes, but teenager no,' Terence chuckled when we cornered him recently at a press conference for his latest drama, My School Daze, which airs on 29 April.

'My girlfriend is in her mid-twenties,' he clarified.

Oh. So who's the girl, we asked.

She's an accounts executive, the actor revealed.

He's known her for two years, and they're ready to move on to the 'next stage' in their relationship, he added.

In fact, he's already proposed, and she's already accepted.

But he's yet to get down on bended knee with ring in hand, he revealed, because he wants to do it the 'old-fashioned' way - he intends to seek his future father-in-law's approval first.

Said Terence: 'He's a very respectable man who loves his daughter very much.

'I want to make sure he is happy with the life I'm going to provide for her before I officially go for the whole works.'

Due to his hectic work schedule - apart from filming, he owns eateries Hey Hey Steamboat and Restoran Selayang - Terence will only plan for the 'approval meal' to happen in the next few weeks.

Once his girlfriend's father gives the go-ahead, it's all systems go, as Terence 'can't wait to marry her'.

That seemed obvious from the way he gushed about her like a schoolboy throughout the interview.

The couple had met through mutual friends two years ago and Terence confessed to being struck by his lady love's 'very attractive appearance'.

'She's tall, slim, with long hair. She's very tanned and very toned as well,' he said, but declined to show us a photo despite our requests.

But what he couldn't get out of his mind was the feeling that he had met her somewhere before.

Sounds corny? Well, the truth was that try as he might, even till today he hasn't figured out why she had seemed so familiar to him during their first meeting.

Initially, the couple had to 'protect the relationship' from media scrutiny so they didn't frequent crowded public places and the times that they did, they wouldn't hold hands.

Even now, they still don't do so in public. Now that he has known her for some time, Terence admitted that their relationship 'just gets better and better'.

Claiming to 'like everything about her', he said that the only times that they disagree are over 'small things' like what they should splurge on.

For example, Terence's girlfriend doesn't think it wise that he spends a fortune on cars while he thinks that paying exorbitant prices for a dress is unnecessary.

However, these minor disagreements 'are nothing' as the lovelorn actor wants nothing more than to 'see her every day'.

Said Terence: 'I have never been happier and I simply love everything about her. My goal in life now is to make her happy.'

This, he also does the old-fashioned way.

Flowers, chocolates and teddy bears are gifts that Terence often bestows on his girlfriend.

And the romantic in him - a side which he never knew he had - has surfaced.

He writes poems to her on little cards he buys from (gift store) Precious Thots when 'I can't express how I feel the conventional way'.

If he suddenly feels like showering her with a nice-smelling bouquet of blooms late in the evening, he will go knocking on florist after florist till he finds the flowers he wants.

Said Terence: 'I was never like that. Now I'm a changed man. This is when you know she's the one.'

But these wooing tactics are what one would expect from a playboy, an image that Terence admitted has stuck with him since he first started out in showbiz 20 years ago. His track record hasn't helped.

In August 2005, Terence was stripped of his driving licence for two years and fined $4,100 by a district court after failing a breathalyser test when the Traffic Police stopped him on Kim Seng Road.

Calling his image a 'misconception', he said that he has never felt the need to 'justify myself' until now.

He attributes his Casanova label to 'the way I carry myself' and surmised that people get the wrong impression when 'I'm just being friendly'.

He feels that the woman he loves 'knows that I'm not one (a playboy)'.

In fact, Terence describes himself as a family man.

After all, the self-confessed daddy-wannabe wants more than six children.

The more kids the merrier

'When it comes to kids, the more the merrier. If I really do have more then six, I would give up everything for them,' he said earnestly.

Having had three steady relationships before, with the previous one lasting for six years, Terence said he was disapponted in the past when he didn't make it down the aisle with those women.

But he hopes to be fourth-time lucky as he now 'understands women much better' and 'knows what my priorities as a husband should be'.

How, where and what the wedding will be like, he will leave in the good hands of his future wife.

If all goes smoothly with his future father-in-law in the next few weeks, he would then have the task of breaking the joyous news to his own parents.

His mother has been pining for him to get married, since three out of his four younger siblings have already done the deed.

'She has become so desperate that she has told me 'anyone also can! Love can grow after that what! You don't want to be lonely right?' he said, with a laugh.

This article was first published in The New Paper.