Crikey!
Terri Irwin, 59, the widow of the late “The Crocodile Hunter” star Steve Irwin, has opened up about her dating life.
“I totally got my happily ever after,” Terri told Us Weekly in an article published Thursday.
“And while there are a lot of wonderful men in the world, can you see another Steve Irwin? I just can’t. I’d be like, ‘I love that you’re a librarian and the Dewey Decimal System is cool, but I got to go jump a crocodile and do that.’ Forget that,” she said.
Terri continued, “I had the best marriage in the whole world for 14 years, and I’m very comfortable with the person I see in the mirror. So I’m okay to be on my own now. And I’m lonely for Steve, but I’m not a lonely person, so I’m very lucky.”
Steve and Terri met in 1991 when Steve was working at his parents’ Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park in Beerwah, Queensland (now known as Australia Zoo). Terri, a fellow animal lover, was working at a wildlife rehabilitation facility at the time and was visiting the park where Steve was doing one of his famous crocodile demonstrations.
“When I saw Terri in the crowd, I looked up and our eyes met and my heart just went, ‘BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG,’” he recalled in a “Crocodile Hunter” episode, adding that it was “love at first sight.”
Terri has been a widow for 18 years. Steve died in 2006 at age 44, after a freak accident when he was filming in the Great Barrier Reef and got pierced in the chest by a stingray barb.
The couple had two children” daughter Bindi, 25, and son Robert, 20, who also starred in their own Animal Planet show, “Crikey! It’s the Irwins.”
Terri said that she herself isn’t interested in dating, but does enjoy watching “The Golden Bachelor.”
Terri added that if Steve were here today, he would be “very proud” of the work she and their children have done in his honor, saying it had been a “big dream” of his to keep conservation efforts going.
“[One day] he came in and he goes, ‘We have to have children. Who are we going to leave this all to? We have to have children.’ And I go, ‘Just because you have kids, doesn’t mean they’re going to be interested in what you’re doing.’ And he goes, ‘No, we’re having children and they’re going to love wildlife and conservation.’”
“The Crocodile Hunter” ran over a decade, from 1996-2007, with spin-off shows such as “Croc Files” (1999-2001) and “The Crocodile Hunter Diaries” (1998-2002).
Robert, who was just shy of 3 years old when Steve died, told The Post in 2018 that he remembers his father a little bit.
“I’m very lucky in the way that I’ve had so much of my life captured on camera, so really as the memories you have of Dad start to fade, you can always look back at the old footage and relive those special moments,” he said.
“At Australia Zoo, you can certainly feel his presence. That was Dad’s favorite place in the world. He literally built the zoo. I really do feel very honored to be following in Dad’s footsteps and continuing that legacy that he had. He was the original wildlife warrior.
“I absolutely love continuing that work.”
