While she might be nervous about camping alongside some of South Africa’s most venomous creatures, Kiwi supermodel Rachel Hunter is winning the hearts of viewers and her co-stars on Aussie reality series I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!
“The thing I’m dreading most about being in the jungle is the animals,” she confessed before heading into the wilderness.
“You’ve got to remember I’m from New Zealand and we don’t have anything too scary at home.”
Since filming started, Rachel, 56, has spoken candidly about her “magic” marriage to rocker Sir Rod Stewart, 81. He is the father of her two kids, Renee, 33, and Liam, 31.
During a cosy campfire chat with The Brady Bunch star Barry Williams, 71, and Neighbours actress Rebekah Elmaloglou, 51, the supermodel shared a memorable story. She recalled meeting the music icon in a nightclub.
“Literally three weeks later, I was engaged,” she remembers.
“Three months later, I was married. We were together for seven years… We had an amazing relationship and we have a lot of respect for each other. There are loads of kids involved. It was just a beautiful seven years of my life that kinda happened.”
Finding herself after heartbreak
Rachel and Rod separated when she turned 27, with the Auckland-born beauty telling her fellow campers the decision was hers because she hit a stage where she questioned, “Who am I? What am I? Where am I going with my life?”
In a 2001 interview, Rachel confessed the reason she walked away from the marriage. She said it was because she’d lost her identity, explaining, “In the nine years we were together, I’d never done anything for myself. “If you’d asked me then what I liked or didn’t like, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. I didn’t even have a hobby… I felt I no longer had an identity. I was just nothing.”
Fast-forward to 2026 and it’s clear that Rachel now knows exactly who she is. A yoga teacher and spiritual seeker, she now splits her time between India, Aotearoa and Los Angeles. She was first drawn to meditation and yoga 18 years ago. At the time, she was managing back pain and attended a hot yoga class in LA.
Discovering yoga by chance
“My only thought when I decided to give yoga a go was that I hoped it might help my back pain,” shares Rachel.
“I had no idea it would become such a pivotal part of my life.”
It wasn’t until she travelled to India for her Tour Of Beauty TV series that she discovered how ancient the practice is. Today, she’s a yoga teacher with more than 500 hours of teacher training under her belt. She regularly teaches classes and retreats around the world and returns to her ashram for a few months each year to work with her guru.
It was her mum Janeen Phillips’ 2017 passing from cancer that inspired Rachel to teach. At 48, she travelled to the Sattva Yoga Academy in the Himalayas to immerse herself in the practice to process the deep grief she felt from Janeen’s death.
Rachel hopes to use the mellowness she’s gained from yoga and meditation as her secret weapon. She wants to outwit and outlast the other famous campers on I’m A Celebrity, where she has stayed modest about her meteoric rise to stardom.
Rising to the spotlight
While her co-stars were wowed by the fact she’d worked with legends like Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell, Rachel had a different story to share. She talked about how she was first spotted.
“I was discovered on the beach, like an old-school story,” she recalls.
“This guy came up to me, gave me his card and said, ‘You need to model.’ I thought it was weird and a bit creepy because I was 16, right?!”
Within just a few short months, she’d moved to New York, was featured on the cover of Elle magazine and became the face of Revlon. By 21, she was Rod’s wife and a bona fide Hollywood celebrity. When asked by her fellow campers how she coped with such a sudden entry into the world of A-list glitz and glamour, Rachel quipped, “I always kinda feel like I’m the chameleon on top of the rock, you know? You just adapt. We were on the road. It was magic.”
