Now showing: Three weddings and a funeral.
This is not the prequel to the 1994 British romance Four Weddings And A Funeral but the Hong Kong entertainment story of the year.
Three hush-hush celebrity marriages were dug up last weekend after the death of Andy Lau's Malaysian father-in-law turned the spotlight on the Heavenly King's love life. Besides Lau, actor-singers Leon Lai and Miriam Yeung were revealed to have got hitched in Las Vegas.
Just who are their secret spouses?
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Carol Choo, 43, wife of Andy Lau, 47
Wedding bells: They wedded in the US on June 23 last year. He held her hand in public for the first time on Aug 25 this year, days after her father's funeral.
Carol who?: She was a part-time model and had entertained showbiz hopes when she met the actor-singer in Malaysia in 1985. Instead, she would be the mystery woman in his life for 24 years.
During their early years, he hid her at his friend Danny Poon's place whenever she visited him in Hong Kong, said Apple Daily. To cover up their romance, they never went out alone but always with Poon and others.
Lau did not apply for Choo's residency in Hong Kong until more than 10 years ago, when her dying mother bade him to look out for her, added the report. Only then did Choo live with him in his Kadoorie Hill apartment in Kowloon.
In Hong Kong, she trained to be a beautician. Later, with Lau as a financial backer, she opened a travel company. But it closed and she has since devoted herself to domestic duties.
Gaile Lai, 29, wife of Leon Lai, 42
Wedding bells: In March last year, the model and the Heavenly King were reported to have married in the Maldives. Rumour, they said. It turns out that they did tie the knot on March 9 last year, but in the United States.
Gaile who?: Long before she was Mrs Leon Lai, she was scandalising Hong Kong with her Westernised ways and devil-may-care attitude.
In 2004, she dominated the news for days after she became the first model in Hong Kong to confess to having had a boob job.
The next year, she had it undone and was back in the headlines. She neither regrets nor is ashamed of the breast implants, she has said. 'I stand by what I have done as long as it doesn't affect others.'
Gaile, whose interests include art, also revealed in a 2007 interview with Ming Pao Weekly that she would strip off at home to draw self-portraits.
Born in Macau and brought up in San Francisco, she has been modelling in Hong Kong since she was 18.
The media remarked on her resemblance to actress Shu Qi, who starred with Leon in City Of Glass in 1998 and dated him secretly for seven years.
Little did they know that Gaile would get the guy eventually.
They had met while making an advertisement in 2000 but did not hook up till 2005. She was the only one he had dated openly in decades.
Gary Ting, 30, husband of Miriam Yeung, 35
Wedding bells: The singer and the publicist exchanged vows in the US on Aug 11. Their Chinese wedding is next year.
Gary who?: Ting, alias Real Ting, gave pop stardom a shot in his early 20s. He sang with boyband VRF, who split up after two albums.
Fairly or unfairly, he had a reputation as a ladies' man and was dubbed a 'star-killer' in the newspapers when he paired up with Yeung and conspicuously caught her concert for a few consecutive nights in 2007.
Not only was she older and more successful, but she was also the most recent in a long line of celebrities he had been linked to, including actresses Charmaine Sheh and Bernice Liu and singers Zoie Tam and Rain Li. Many of his rumoured romances had lasted for only three months.
Two years on, he is still with Yeung, though. The son of a Shanghai-based leather businessman is a public relations account manager.
This article was first published in The Straits Times.
