The Manchester United legend had affairs with his brother’s wife and a former Miss Wales when married, then cheated on a new partner with eight women
A Manchester United legend’s ‘love rat’ private life became public in a number of staggering revelations towards the end of his career.
Ryan Giggs won it all in a glittering playing career at Old Trafford, but his public image was tainted after two high-profile affairs came to light. The former Wales winger, who turns 52 today (Saturday, November 29), appeared to be the perfect family man when he married his childhood sweetheart Stacey Cooke in 2007 at Manchester’s Lowry Hotel.
The pair went on to have two children together, with youngest son Zach, 19, now a professional footballer at Sheffield United. The family lived in a £3million mansion in Worsley, Greater Manchester, but that marital bliss came crumbling down.
In 2011, his eight-year affair with his younger brother Rhodri’s wife Natasha Giggs, nee Lever, came to light.
Natasha, who has two children with Rhodri, even fell pregnant with the United star and aborted the child just two weeks before she married Rhodri in Las Vegas.
Giggs met Natasha in a nightclub in Manchester in March 2003 and they spent the night together while his pregnant fiancee Stacey was at home.
Natasha started dating Rhodri two months later, but she and the footballer resumed their affair after a year, rendezvousing in hotel rooms and vacant properties she had access to through her job as an estate agent.
Rhodri said he found out many of his footballer friends were ‘at it’ with his ex and claimed one star fled a bar in Portugal rather than face him.
Members of Giggs’ family cut ties with him when the affair was unearthed, with his dad saying he was ‘ashamed’ of his son.
Natasha appeared on This Morning in 2012 to discuss the scandal involving her affair with Giggs, before later appearing on the ninth series of Celebrity Big Brother, where she was evicted after just nine days.
Rhodri later made headlines by mocking the United winger – including in a Paddy Power advert – but has since reconciled with his brother.
Giggs’ marriage to Stacey somehow survived the affair with Natasha, but there wasn’t only one woman on the side that the love rat had on hand.
A year before his affair with Natasha became public, Giggs started a seven month fling with Celebrity Big Brother star and 2003 Miss Wales, Imogen Thomas.
The Premier League icon had made a gagging order to stop details of their romance from becoming public.
But the expensive £150,000 super injunction came out when Lib Dem MP John Hemming used Parliamentary privilege to name him in the House of Commons.
Thomas had posed topless for lads’ magazines and previously dated England striker Jermain Defoe and Russell Brand. And Giggs is said to have recognised her in a nightclub before pursuing her.
The two “met four times between September and December in 2010”, according to the winger’s statement released after the scandal broke.
“He’s not like other footballers,” Imogen said in an interview in the Sunday Mirror. “He seemed very decent and private with good morals, and I fell for that.”
Giggs’ marriage also initially survived that revelation too, but Stacey eventually called it time, and it was announced in 2017 that the couple would split after 10 years of marriage.
But Giggs in his newfound freedom, not like he was held back beforehand, started a new fling with 38-year-old PR executive Kate Greville after the pair first met in 2013, when she was tasked with helping plan the launch of Giggs and Gary Neville’s Hotel Football business.
Both were in unhappy marriages and began confiding in each other. Greville later described Giggs as her “saviour”, her “soul mate” and her “knight in shining armour”.
She added: “It was more than a sexual thing.”
Their relationship ended after Greville accused Giggs of domestic abuse, which the then-Wales manager denied and was ultimately cleared of. Jurors were unable to reach verdicts in a trial in August 2022.
He was due to go on trial for a second time in July 2023 charged with coercive or controlling behaviour against Greville and assault on her sister Emma, but his former partner declined to give evidence again and prosecutors dropped the case, resulting in not guilty verdicts.
During the first trial, Manchester Crown Court heard Giggs was nicknamed ‘Randy Ryan’ and the ‘Welsh Wanderer’ by female administrative staff at United because of affairs he had with some of them.
Claims were heard that he cheated on Greville with eight women. One of those women mentioned was an employee of Hotel Football, who Greville claimed was messaging Giggs about having a “threesome”.
A heartbreaking ‘final goodbye’ letter Greville wrote to Giggs, which she never sent but was read out in court, saw her mention eight women by first name only, who she claimed the star had cheated on her with.
When he gave evidence, Giggs confessed that calling him a “love cheat” was justified and said he was a “flirt by nature” who had never been faithful in relationships.
Giggs has since become a father for the third time at 50 when he embarked on a new relationship with lingerie model girlfriend Zara Charles, 36, while the court case was ongoing.
The couple welcomed a daughter, Cora, born in November 2024. A source told The Sun that “Stacey approves of Zara.
“Her and Ryan have been through a lot but they have moved on and she’s only interested in him being happy, because that makes him a good dad to their kids.
“There is no animosity.”
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