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Jeremy Hunt describes his wife Lucia as his ‘secret weapon’ – quietly supporting his political ambitions as well as helping manage their multi-million pound property portfolio.
However, Mrs Hunt describes her husband the Chancellor, 57, as something rather different, revealing recently that his nickname at home is ‘Mr Big Rice’ due to the way his name sounds in her native Chinese and his 6ft2ins height.Â
Lucia, who is 11 years Jeremy’s junior, stood proudly outside Number 12 Downing Street yesterday as she watched her husband flourish his red box ahead of the Budget.
Alongside her were their equally-proud three children Jack, 13, Anna, 11, and Eleanor, nine, who later got a wave from their neighbour Rishi Sunak in the Commons yesterday where they watched from the gallery as their father cut National Insurance by 2p.
While the occupants above 10 and 11 Downing Street were at each other’s throats during the Blair and Brown years, these days things are more harmonious because the PM’s two daughters Krishna and Anoushka love a playdate with the Chancellor’s children, especially a game of hide and seek.
Lucia has been a highly significant influence on her husband and has taken an increasingly visible role by his side after years in the background.
The couple met in 2008 when Lucia was 30 and working for Warwick University helping them to recruit Chinese students. The then 41-year-old Jeremy Hunt was running the Hotcourses online education business which turned him into a multi-millionaire.Â
Lucia described him as an ardent but understated suitor. Despite his growing wealth, he wooed her with tea and biscuits rather than expensive gifts, trip and meals.  He also utilised his perks as Shadow Culture Secretary to take her to a ‘freebie’ performance of Othello at the Donmar Warehouse in London. And the rest is history.
Jeremy Hunt’s wife Lucia (second from left) stood outside Number 12 Downing Street to watch the Chancellor, joined by their three proud children Jack (far left), 13, Anna (centre left), 11, and Eleanor (far right), nine
The couple’s son, Jack, followed his mother out into Downing Street yesterday
Jeremy and Lucia (pictured together in 2009 after their engagement) were married within a year of meeting at Warwick University, where Mr Hunt had business interests and she was helping recruit Chinese students
Jeremy Hunt with his wife Lucia and two of their children in 2012 at a society wedding in Chadlington, Oxfordshire
Jeremy Hunt and his wife Lucia arrive at the State Banquet thrown for Donald Trump at Buckingham Palace in 2019 when he was Foreign Secretary
They were married within a year with Mr Hunt saying their short courtship was a chance for him to mix work with pleasure.
Mr Hunt had ensured they stayed in touch after their first meeting after asking for her email address.
Hunt, the son of Admiral Sir Nicholas Hunt, proposed in impeccable middle class fashion during a country walk close to his parents’ Surrey home.
Lucia recalled: ‘He asked me to put my hands in a tree. I said, no, it looked like a fox hole and I thought he’d do some trick on me. He said, there’s something in there for you. It was a ring.’
The couple then flew out together to Mrs Hunt’s home city of Xian so Mr Hunt could ask her father for her hand in marriage, with Lucia translating his nervous request.Â
‘He started to tell him how we met and I explained to my father everything. I had to translate everything,’ she said. ‘My father started crying’.
Despite this special moment, some things have been lost in translation with Mr Hunt, who has been known for a gaffe over the years, making a series of mistakes about his wife.
Lucia was thrust into the spotlight when Mr Hunt accidentally described her as ‘Japanese’ – the nationality of one of his previous girlfriends – on a trip to Asia.
Last year he also admitted not having the time to wish his wife a happy birthday – so had to do it in the Autumn Statement instead.Â
Dressed in a clean-cut cream matching blazer and skirt, Lucia, 46, could not hide her excitement as she beamed while watching her husband of 15 years hold up his red ministerial box
Lucia, who is 11 years his junior, was called Hunt’s ‘secret weapon’ during his Conservative Party leadership campaign in 2019
The family were pictured last March when the Chancellor announced the BudgetÂ
Jeremy Hunt and Lucia in 2019, a year after he mistakenly said his Chinese wife was JapaneseÂ
In an interview when he battled but lost to Boris Johnson in the fight to become Tory leader, Mr Hunt famously said: ‘No, no, no, I don’t think we should go there’ when his wife decided to revealed her nickname for him.
Undeterred, she explained: ‘My grandma found it very hard to say “Jeremy” so she would just call him the “big mi”. Mi means “rice”, so I call him “big rice”.’Â
With the cat out of the bag Mr Hunt admitted he called his wife ‘Precious’.
The Chancellor has not been one to wheel out his children in the way the Blairs did – but he has spoken about them.
Speaking after the birth of his youngest child, Eleanor, in 2014, Hunt praised the NHS and said it was a ‘real thrill’ to see the ‘the very best of the service for the birth of our beautiful daughter.’
‘As for the Hunt family, Lucia is making a good recovery and we are all delighted with our precious little girl even if somewhat terrified of the domestic chaos that awaits,’ he added.
In the same year, Mr Hunt admitted that he feared for the future of his three children who are ‘half Chinese’ – because uncontrolled immigration risks causing ‘tensions’ in Britain.
He said he was worried that mounting anger against migrants would mean his Chinese wife and their children would face hostility for using the NHS.
He warned at the time that unless the level of immigration was under control, the UK would have to face up to the sort of ‘social divisions’ that had tarnished other countries.
He made his comments in a phone-in programme hosted by Iain Dale on LBC Radio.
‘I’d like to make one general point about immigration,’ he said. ‘My wife is Chinese and she obviously lives with me in London.
‘My children are half Chinese and I do not want them to grow up in a country where people look at immigrants and say it’s difficult for me to access NHS services because of people like you.
‘And that’s why it’s so important to have sensible, balanced, controlled immigration in this country.
‘Because otherwise we’ll have social divisions, we’ll have tensions, which thankfully in this country we’ve avoided for many years unlike other countries.’
Jeremy Hunt MP with his wife Lucia at Conservative Party Summer Ball at The Natural History Museum in 2011
Lucia Guo (centr), listens to her husband address the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham in 2018
Jeremy Hunt with his wife on the way back from a G7 summit in France in 2019
But there are no such divisions in Downing Street, where the Hunts and the Sunaks are said to get on famously.
Their children are understood to play together regularly inside the historic houses and the large, mature garden.
‘The children have already started regular playdates with Rishi [Sunak]’s children, as they’re just next door,’ Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, said last year when his family moved in above No 11.
‘They’re all of a similar age — Rishi’s daughters are nine and 11 and mine are eight and ten, and I have a son who is 12.
‘It’s a great play area for them — it looks quite small on the outside, but it’s like the Tardis, there’s a lot of room inside.’
He adds: ‘It’s nice that there’s a family atmosphere in what can otherwise be a fairly formal place.’
Mr Hunt is believed to be worth at least £15million.
Hotcourses, his educational firm he founded in 1991 that led him to Lucia, was sold to an Australian firm in 2017, where he netted £14.5million.
The couple are thought to run a real estate business called Mare Pond Properties Ltd and own seven properties, including a £1.7million townhouse in Pimlico, South London.
Lucia is a director under her birth name Ge Guo.
