The MasterChef favourite missed out on the title, but has won a much greater prize, writes LUCY CHESTERTON.
Marion Grasby might not have won MasterChef, but as she looks adoringly at her boyfriend Tim Althaus across a windswept South Australian beach it’s obvious she has won something even sweeter – his heart.
As Marion leaps onto Tim’s back in a playful, unguarded moment, then rolls up her jeans for a paddle in the chilly shallows, she couldn’t be happier to finally be back beside Tim, feeling the sand between her toes and with more than a thousand kilometres between her and the three beady-eyed MasterChef judges in Sydney.
“He was extremely happy to have me home,” Marion smiles. “The first thing he did was give me a giant cuddle. I missed his laugh and his sense of humour so much.”
While her time on the hit show is a life-changing achievement, being eliminated in ninth place wasn’t exactly the glorious ending Australia had predicted for Marion, who was dubbed the show’s frontrunner when she tempted the judges in her audition with an innovative twice-baked goat’s cheese soufflé matched with garlic snails.
But when her misguided satay sauce saw her slip up in the kitchen, Marion was more than happy to pack up her plates and rush into the welcoming arms of 29-year-old Tim, who remained at home in Adelaide.
“You can’t be perfect every day,” Marion muses. “Every time I walked into the kitchen I knew someone could be going home and it could be me.
“It was just a bad day in the kitchen for me, and it was unfortunate that it happened on a day when I was up for elimination.”
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