Home and Away’s Shane Withington Reveals He Kept Relationship with Co-Star Anne Tenney a Secret for Years

Shane Withington, best known to audiences as John Palmer on the Australian soap opera Home and Away, has opened up about his private life, revealing that he and his wife, actress Anne Tenney, kept their romance a secret for years while working together on a previous show.

Withington and Tenney, who is known for her role in the film The Castle, met and fell in love while starring in the 1980s Australian drama A Country Practice. Withington played veterinarian Brendan Jones, who was married to Tenney’s character, nurse Molly Jones. The couple is now married and has a daughter, Madeleine.

In a past interview, Withington explained their decision to keep the relationship private: “We kept it under our hats, no one really knew… We didn’t want to cheapen our relationship by doing a magazine cover saying ‘we found love on a soap opera’! We valued our relationship more than that, it’s a private thing and we’ve kept it that way ever since.”

The revelation of their real-life romance even shocked their fellow actors decades later. Home and Away star Lynne McGranger (Irene Roberts) recounted how she “nearly died” when Withington told her he was married to Anne Tenney, admitting she became a “hopeless soap romantic” over the news that the “real Brendan and the real Molly” were together.

Tenney left A Country Practice in 1985 when her character Molly tragically died of leukemia, an episode that drew millions of viewers. Withington, who is now a long-time cast member of Home and Away, joined the Summer Bay soap in 2009.