From Love Island Winners to Nearlyweds Hosts: Molly Smith and Tom Clare Make Their Next Move

Few reality TV couples have captured the nations attention quite like Molly Smith and Tom Clare. After winning the very first series of Love Island: All Stars in 2024, their whirlwind villa romance turned into a real-world love story – and now, an engagement!

But they’re not just planning their big day alone – they’re inviting the public along for the journey.

The couple are stepping into a brand-new chapter as the hosts of Nearlyweds with Molly & Tom, the relationship podcast originally fronted by Jamie Laing and Sophie Habboo. Swapping sun loungers for studio mics, Molly and Tom are inviting listeners inside their journey from reality TV sweethearts to real-life fiancés – sharing the highs, the honest moments, and everything in between as they prepare for married life.

As they take over the reins, we sit down with the Love Island legends to talk engagement life, navigating love in the public eye, and what fans can expect from this new era of Nearlyweds…

Molly and Tom, congratulations on your engagement! Given how much of your lives play out in the public eye, when you strip away the social media gloss and the hype around your relationship, how does it feel to be engaged? It’s such a significant, real-life milestone.

Molly: It feels amazing! It’s such a wonderful feeling knowing you’ve found your forever person.

Tom: We feel really lucky – lucky to have found each other, and lucky to be as happy as we are together, because not everybody gets to experience the kind of love we have for each other, and that actually makes me feel really sad, because I want everyone to have what we have.

Molly: We’re so grateful to be doing life together aren’t we?

Tom: Absolutely! We’re riding the wave, and enjoying being in an engagement bubble. 

Growing up, was marriage something you both always dreamed of or imagined for yourselves?

Tom: If I said ‘no’ – Molly would kill me (laughs).

Molly: TOM! Personally, I’ve always envisioned getting married, and having that foundation of a husband and a family at home. And despite him joking around now, I know that’s what Tom wants too, because it’s something he’s always mentioned and been very honest about. 

Tom: We’re both fortunate in the fact that we grew up with our parents being together, so in a way you can’t help but look at that and not want the same in your own life. To meet someone and have a family with them is 100% something I’ve always dreamed of. 

How has being engaged changed the dynamic of your relationship, if at all?

Molly: Between the two of us, how we live and how we manage our day to day lives, I don’t think anything’s changed that much to be honest with you.

Tom: Except the fact that Molly does everything with left hand now… 

Molly: (laughs) yeah I’m all of a sudden left handed girlie now he’s put a ring on it! If anything has changed in our relationship, I’d say it’s just the fact that there’s this new level of excitement between us, as we start to plan the wedding, and imagine what the days going to be like.

Tom: An engagement definitely solidifies the status of a relationship doesn’t it? It’s a big step forward, as you’re making a real commitment to one another, and saying that you’re serious about being together forever, which I personally really like. I wanted Molly to know that this was it, and that I was all in… and I wanted to put a ring on her finger.

It’s been six months since Tom’s epic proposal, and your schedules seem busier than ever – why did this feel like the right moment to step in and take the reins of the Nearlyweds podcast?

Molly: I think the timing is perfect, I really do. When the idea was first put to us, we both say ‘yes’ immediately! It’s a brilliant opportunity, and we’d have been crazy to have turned it down.

Tom: We both really love Jamie and Sophie. It was actually Jamie who reached out and asked us personally if we wanted to do it, and we really couldn’t believe it, because honestly it’s a podcast we listen to a lot when we’re driving back and forth to London.

Molly: It was quite overwhelming at first wasn’t it? Like Tom said, we’re such big fans of the podcast, I mean I remember us trying to get tickets for the live tour (laughs). So it’s very surreal to think we’re the new ‘nearlyweds’.

Tom: But we’re not in any way, shape or form taking over or replacing Sophie and Jamie, we’re just coming on board to share our story.

In terms of the overall feel of the pod, are you going for more of a “no filter” vibe, or are their certain parts of your relationship you want to protect and keep private?

Tom: I think there are aspects to every relationship that you like to keep private, of course! But in terms of what we share and say on the podcast… it’s very raw! Because as well as talking about the engagement, and the wedding, we also speak about all of the other things happening in our lives as well, so there are moments when we have to ‘go there’ and get a little bit serious. But overall I’d say there’s a good balance of covering the good times, the bad times, the happy times, and the times when you maybe fall out… it’s all in there. I like that though, because that’s real life, that’s reality! Social media has made it difficult for people to understand that I think. People like to post a snapshot of their lives online that only captures the good, and that isn’t a true reflection of how anyones life is. So I like that we’re showing a different side to our lives and personalities.

Molly: We both come from a reality background, I mean… the start of our relationship was on shown on national TV (laughs) so I think at this point we’re both pretty used to sharing most things. As individuals, and as a couple we were very open and raw during our time on the show (Love Island), so my feeling is, why not continue with that honesty on the podcast? It’s nice to give people that insight. 

You have such a brilliant, and unique story to tell…

Molly: We love that our journey together has been captured and documented from the beginning. It’s like a nice little time capsule that we’ll be able to keep forever. In the future, if we do have children, we’ll be able to sit them down and show them how we met… actually I don’t know if we’ll want to do that will we?

Tom: Oh I will! Our kids are going to watch everything!

‘Nearlyweds’ is all about giving listeners a window into your world and showing what planning a wedding is really like. So, let’s get straight to the important question: are you laid-back planners, or are you already buried deep in Pinterest boards and spreadsheets?

Tom: I think we’re a bit of both… don’t you?

Molly: Yeah I think so! We balance each other out, so if I’m ever going off on one, Tom can calm me down and vice versa.

What do you hope listeners take away from the pod?

Molly: That planning a wedding isn’t always easy, perfect or glamorous. You can’t always get or have what you want, and that’s okay. We’ve really tried to be as raw and honest as possible. The reality is, this is the first time either of us has ever planned a wedding, and so we don’t really know what we’re doing! There’s a lot to navigate, and you come up against things all the time that you wouldn’t imagine being a problem… but they are (laughs). So we’re learning a lot, and we’re hoping that anybody out there who’s planning a wedding themselves, listens and can relate… and maybe learn from some of our mistakes.