After over 25 years together, Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster’s love is tried and true blue. But no couple is immune to the storms that buffet all relationships, and right now Rod and Penny appear to be navigating some rough conditions.
According to the Daily Mail, the couple have reached a “stalemate” over their split living conditions. Stewart is loving life in Los Angeles, jetting across to Las Vegas for his Caesars Palace residency (which he just extended into 2025) and hosting banquets for his best mates at his custom-built Beverley Hills mansion each weekend.
Meanwhile, Lancaster wants to properly embrace UK living and relocate full-time to the couple’s Grade II-listed countryside mansion in Essex, while working in her role as a special constable for the City of London police.
The Mail describes Stewart’s Los Angeles property as a “gilded cage” for Lancaster. It has been up for sale since December 2023, with Stewart initially set on relocating to London with Lancaster, but the singer has since turned down offers on the property, currently listed at $80m.
However, Stewart has since insisted that there is “no rift” between the two of them and has clarified what is really going on with their housing situation.
So, trouble in paradise? Or rather — in between paradises? Or is it all much ado about nothing? Here, we look back on Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster’s love story, as well as all recent developments.
A young photographer meets an established rock star
In January 1999, a then-27-year-old Penny Lancaster met Rod Stewart, then 53, while at a party with a friend at the Dorchester Hotel. Her pal had dared Lancaster to ask for Stewart’s autograph. Lancaster revealed that she was a photography student at Barking College in Essex, and via this conversation she managed to score a job as Stewart’s tour photographer.
“When we first met, I got her phone number — I had just broken up,” Rod said on an episode of Loose Women, where Penny works as a host, in 2015. “I gave it to the bass player... and he kept it for six months!” he added, explaining that his bandmate didn’t reckon he was ready to date again. At this point, Stewart was already a father of six children, which he shared with four women.
Months later, the Maggie May singer managed to track down Lancaster’s number and called to ask if he could invite her out to dinner (and finally see the pictures she had taken on tour).
A first date and an upside down kiss
Lancaster arrived at dinner in leather trousers and Stewart was “struck by her fresh face and girlish demeanour.” Trouble is, she was in a relationship with someone else who she’d been with for ten years — and they were engaged. “She was always completely open with me about that. Recently, she said, things hadn’t been going too well, but she was torn about letting this person go,” Stewart writes in his autobiography.
Then, while visiting Stewart’s house one day and looking at paintings in his bedroom, he asked Lancaster to lie on her back on the bed. He leant over and kissed her, an “upside down” kiss that he says Lancaster calls “the most romantic and seductive meeting of lips” she’s ever known.
The pair started dating and Lancaster left her other partner even though she feared dating Stewart - who already had six kids - might mean she never got to have children of her own. But that didn’t last too long, because...
The anniversary of 9/11 encourages Rod Stewart to have another baby
Rod Stewart writes in his autobiography that the memory of 9/11 changed his view on expanding his family. “And then came September 11, 2004, the third anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center,” he says. “We were sitting by a lake on one of those bright, clear, English autumn afternoons, talking about the families destroyed on that day and the children left behind. After a while, I said: ‘Let’s make a baby.’ And I knew I meant it.”
Within a year they would welcome their first child, Alastair Stewart.
Rod Stewart proposes in Paris - after getting permission from Penny’s dad
Stewart proposed to a newly pregnant Lancaster in March 2005, but he had to do one thing first. “In March 2005, when Penny was nearing her 33rd birthday, I took her to Paris for the day with her mum and dad,” Stewart writes in his autobiography. “As we were crossing the Tarmac to the plane, I hung back slightly with Penny’s dad, and above the whine of the engine, leaned into his ear and said: ‘Do I have your permission to ask your daughter to marry me?’ Graham’s a tough man, but his legs almost went from under him. I had to hold him up for a moment. ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Yes, you do!’”
Stewart proposed to Lancaster later that day, in the Jules Verne restaurant on the second platform of the Eiffel Tower. “Penny had a minute of disbelief,” Stewart remembered of the moment. “Her hands went to her face and her eyes welled. Eventually, I said: ‘Please say something Penny, because my knee is killing me.’” Rod also writes that this night was the night they conceived Alastair.
As for Penny’s side: “I was stunned, threw my arms around him and burst into tears,” Lancaster told the Standard at the time. “I opened the box and he had bought me the most amazing Princess cut diamond engagement ring — classic and striking.”
A wedding on the Italian Riviera
A little over two years later, Lancaster and Stewart said ‘I do’ in a chapel strewn with white roses in the town of Santa Margherita, on the Italian Riviera. Penny wore a strapless dress by Spanish designer Manuel Mota with an embellished bodice and a delicate up-do, while Rod went full pointed collar and ivory waistcoat in his black and white suit.
The couple would later go on to renew their vows in 2017, in a ceremony with 100 friends and family members at their Essex home. The couple exchanged vows underneath a beech tree in the garden, before enjoying a three-course meal in a marquee.
Baby number two arrives after fertility treatments
Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster welcomed their second son, Aiden, in 2011, after a brief struggle with conception. “Aiden was a little while in the making,” Stewart writes in his memoir. “We tried for two years before specialists discovered that Penny had high levels of mercury in her body and recommended that we try in vitro fertilisation.
“We had three rounds of IVF in all, which is physically very punishing for the woman and heartbreaking when it doesn’t work. Still, we kept on going. I was on tour in Moscow in the summer of 2010 when Penny phoned to say she was finally pregnant, and we both wept for joy.”
Twenty years and two very different lives across two continents
Lancaster and Stewart are still going strong today, but they have been rocked by recent rumours of relationship turbulence as the pair struggle to come to a decision over where they should live. Lancaster is a special constable for the City of London Police and Loose Women panellist, which ties her to London. Moreover, she is a countryside girl at heart, and wants Stewart to commit to living in their Grade II-listed countryside mansion in Essex full time.
Meanwhile, Stewart is perfectly happy living in his Los Angeles mansion while he extends his Las Vegas residency for another year, with his final show due for June 2025. “He gets to spend quality time with his grandchildren and hosts a banquet dinner almost every Sunday night at home for a crowd of his best friends,” a source told The Daily Mail of Stewart’s life in LA.
“Penny has no plans to return to LA, which she’s not a fan of, while Rod has no plans to move back right now,” the source continued. “They’re at a stalemate and Penny is angry that Rod’s gone back on his word. It’s about saving their marriage right now.”
However, Rod Stewart put his foot down yesterday, firmly dispelling any and all rumours of a “rift” between he and Penny. “There is absolutely no rift between Penny and I, and no disagreement on where we should reside, in fact it’s the opposite,” he said on Instagram.
“We moved permanently back to our beloved Britain a year ago but are fortunate to also have homes in different countries, which we love to visit.
“Originally we did think it made sense to sell our house in LA, but having spent a wonderful time there this summer with family and friends during my Vegas residency we realised that it makes sense to keep our house there.”
“Penny and I could not be more in love with each other after 27 glorious years. Please trust me on this... there’s no disharmony in our marriage.” So for all Rod and Penny fans out there, fear not, they’re strong enough to weather a little long distance turbulence.
