Today’s Jill Martin reveals how one fateful call led her to get re-engaged to ex Erik Brooks

Pair ended a previous engagement in May last year

Jill Martin and Erik Brooks at a gala on 11 October 2018 in New York City (Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for QVC)

Today show contributor Jill Martin is engaged to Erik Brooks again, after the pair ended a previous engagement.

Martin announced the news in an essay shared by the programme on Monday (22 November).

Brooks and Martin first got engaged in May 2019 after meeting on an online dating app in 2017. In May last year, Martin announced that their engagement had ended.

"This pandemic has taken a toll on so many aspects of life — it’s such a difficult time for everyone,” she said at the time in a statement. “Erik is the most magnificent person, but with him living in Boston with his children and me living in New York, the distance just became too difficult for us to maintain the kind of relationship that’s important to us both.”

After 18 months apart, however, Martin called Brooks on the phone, and that call led to them rekindling their relationship, and eventually their engagement.

“I decided to call,” she wrote in the essay, titled “We're engaged ... again! Why this time around is different”.

“It had been 18 months since I had given the ring back. It had been 18 months since we had spoken. During those months, I was never even tempted to reach out — the thought was just too painful. But then one day, I built up the courage — chutzpah, as my Grammy would say — and I called at 2 pm on a Thursday. He picked up.”

Brooks, she said, was “shocked” to hear from her and “took time to process that first conversation”. Then, the pair “began to learn about each other again” as they “wanted to make sure this time would be different”.

“Our relationship couldn’t stay the way it was,” Martin wrote. “We needed a pause. A long pause. And we took it.”

Their second engagement took place in the Bahamas, on a small fishing boat.

“It was beautiful, but it was different,” Martin wrote, adding that their first engagement in the Hamptons was “extravagant and over-the-top”.

“Everyone’s journey is different,” she said. “It took me 45 years to find my fairy tale. When I realised I was confident on my own, that’s when I knew Erik and I were ready to get back together.”