A life shattered – and the most inspiring love story you’ll ever read: How a rugby player who was paralysed in a match fought back to ski, complete a marathon… and win the woman of his dreams, writes Frances Hardy.
When Matthew King was paralysed from the neck down by a catastrophic sports injury in his teens, the list of things he could not do seemed endless and insurmountable.
He could not move, breathe without a ventilator or go anywhere unattended by his support workers. He had to be washed, dressed, fed and trussed up in a corset each morning to stop his back from crumpling. For three months he could not even speak.
His world was circumscribed by his disability. Each night a nebuliser and suctions were used to clear his lungs of the fluid that would otherwise have drowned him. He had to be hoisted into bed and hauled out again.
You might imagine such an existence would be bleak, joyless and hopeless. But you would be wrong. For Matt, now 28, confounded everyone’s expectations – even his own – and forged a new life rich in incident, achievement and purpose.
He became the first paralysed athlete on a ventilator to ski and the first to complete a marathon, in New York, steering his motorised wheelchair through the streets with his chin.
He embarked, too, on a mission to instil hope in others with similarly profound disabilities, becoming an adviser and trustee of several charities and an inspirational public speaker. Then, at just 25, he was awarded an OBE. Now he has written a newly-published memoir.
“If people had let me wallow in misery and said: ‘He’s paralysed. That’s the end’, I might have believed it,” he says.
“But my family, my friends and my teachers all backed me and supported me. There was a lot of sympathy, but nobody ever accepted I should give up. That’s not me, anyway. I refused to be defined by what I couldn’t do or didn’t have. I knew inside I was the same person — the same stubborn, determined Matt.”
There was one thing, however, even Matt believed would elude him. He did not think he would ever find a life partner who would see beyond the severity of his disabilities and discover the person beneath. Love, he thought, would pass him by him.
“After my accident, I thought that part of my life was over,” he says. “And although I was confident and happy, and had achieved so many goals, there was a void, something missing. What’s the purpose of life if not to find love?”
But today he has, once again, surprised even himself: Matt is engaged to be married. His fiancée, Polish born Ilona-Roza Kubica, 31, is bright, pretty and articulate. She is an area manager with Amazon, who’s lived in England for 10 years and been with Matt since 2013.
The pair, who will wed in July, share a specially adapted three-bedroom bungalow in Bedford. Matt, a strict observer of protocol, went to Poland to seek approval from Ilona’s father: “My Polish is sketchy, but I learntthe right phrases, and Ilona’s dad smiled, said, ‘Tak, tak’ (yes, yes) and put his hand on his heart. I knew he approved, and that meant a lot,” he says.
Theirs is, by any standards, an unconventional relationship. For a start, they share their lives and home with Matt’s support workers – two remain as close to him as royal protection officers, night and day, in case he needs medical attention; they sit at a discreet distance outside the room as we talk – but Ilona is unfazed by their presence.
“I want Ilona to be my best friend; lover, my wife and the mother of my children. I don’t want her to be my carer, so that’s why I’ll continue to have support,” explains Matt.
“My relationship with Ilona may not be entirely normal but I can’t foresee obstacles to having children, although our roles and responsibilities when we bring them up will be very different.”
Will Ilona feel constrained by Matt’s dependent, highly-structured life? Will Matt be frustrated by Ilona’s freedom to be impulsive? These are subjects they’ve discussed and resolved.
“I’m fiercely independent,” concedes Ilona. “And Matthew can’t be, but the only obstacle for me was the change in my mentality. I never had a schedule before, but I actually like the fact my life is more organised.
“I asked myself if I wanted to be with Matthew, and went for it with my heart and soul. I don’t feel constrained. We both agree it’s important he continues to pursue his interests, and he’s always let me be myself.”
They met online in February 2013 and waited five months before their first date. Matt made the initial approach to Ilona. “I have to admit it was her beauty that first attracted me,” he says. She strokes his hand; he cannot, of course, reciprocate.
Ilona read Matt’s message. “He’d written an essay! He seemed to have the same values as me: family-loving, respectful, hard working; I didn’t really take in the rest, so to begin with I didn’t even realise he was paralysed.”
Their early attempts to meet were frustrated because Ilona, then an NHS administrator, was frantically busy at work. Then Matt went away on a holiday. Each believed the other was stalling. They reached an unhappy impasse.
It might have ended there but for a happy coincidence. Matt, arriving home from work one evening, spotted Ilona cycling in Bedford. Having seen photos of her, he was certain who she was. “I saw this incredibly beautiful woman and I thought: ‘I swear that’s Ilona’. So I sent her a message. ‘I’ve just seen you!’.”
“But still he didn’t ask me out!” recalls Ilona. “So I said: ‘I’d like to meet your dogs. (Matt has two Labradors.) You can come along as well if you like!’ ”
Duly, they fixed to meet at a bar one balmy July evening. Matt continues: “I arrived an hour early so I could choose a spot with the sunset behind me. I briefed the staff to minimise the impact of things I couldn’t do, asking them: ‘As soon as my guest arrives could you bring out the drinks?’.”
“I’m a confident person, but I was nervous. Then Ilona arrived and she looked perfect. We talked for three hours, then realised the sun had gone down and we hadn’t drawn breath.”
Ilona remembers: “I was quite nervous about the meeting, about the wheelchair. I hoped it wouldn’t be an obstacle; that I wouldn’t stare. I’d been talking to my sister and she’d said that I needed to be careful, because if it came to nothing I could hurt Matthew badly.
“But I said: ‘The wheelchair’s irrelevant. If I like him, I like him. Simple as.” When I saw him, for a second I lost my nerve. But I gave him a drink and we relaxed.
“We started to talk; about our lives, our values, what we wanted from life. It wasn’t the usual small talk; this was big. We’re both close to our families; focused. We laughed a lot, too, and from that first meeting I knew I really wanted to see him again.
“It helped, of course, that I fancied him. In life he looked even better than his photo.”
Matt, says: “I wanted Ilona to see beyond my disability, to meet Matt the person. So I did everything to make sure my personality came out. We lead a very different life from most couples, but it’s one we cherish.
“And it progressed very quickly. Ilona went from being someone I fancied, to becoming a huge part of my life. Even now,” he adds, looking fondly at her. “I can’t believe she feels the same way about me as I do about her.”
By the second date, a trip to the zoo, Ilona was wondering whether they’d be able to have a physical relationship. The answer, it emerged, was yes.
It was she who first told Matt how much he meant to her. After a few months, in bed one night, she murmured, “I love you just as she drifted into sleep.”
“I knew I loved her, and told her as well, but she’d already fallen asleep,” laughs Matt.
By June 2014, Matt having chosen a diamond and sapphire ring, they were engaged.
“We were staying in a hotel in Prague; I’d hoped for another perfect sunset, but it was raining and that day we’d got drenched. Back in our room, with few options, I said to Ilona: ‘Go and get that little box over there’.”
She continues: “And I saw the ring and burst into tears. Matthew asked me to marry him, and of course I said yes.”
The plans for their wedding in July are already under way. Ilona, a Catholic, wanted a church blessing, then a modest barbeque for friends and family in their back garden. Matt, on the contrary, favoured a big do with bells and whistles.
“I want to do it right,” he says. “We’ve had lots of discussions, and I want it to be special: the day when we begin a new chapter of our lives.”
This new chapter will not be without challenges. “We’ve got to be honest. It’s not always perfect,” says Ilona,
“But I never feel the need to treat Matthew differently because he’s in a wheelchair. He gets exactly the same as everyone else! But we laugh a lot. We lead a very different life from most couples, but it’s one we cherish.”
They go for runs together, Matt in his wheelchair, Ilona jogging by his side, and they love to dance. “But I pay a price. My dresses get ruined. They get caught in Matthew’s wheels,” laughs Ilona. They travel, too, and attend Matthew’s charity functions together.
It is a busy, fulfilled life; one that Matt never imagined he would be leading when, aged 17, he lay within a whisker of death on a rugby pitch in Halifax.
He’d been playing for the Rugby League side London Broncos Academy. It was the first game for which he’d be paid, the first step, he hoped, on the ladder to being a fulltime professional.
The date – 04.04.04 – is seared in his memory. He has made it the title of his book, a two-year project, he wrote on his computer, dictating with a voice recognition device.
He remembers little of the crushing tackle that floored him, broke his neck and severed his spine. “I threw my body into my first tackle of the game and another player’s knee hit my neck. Then there was nothing, just nothing: no feeling, no movement, no pain. My immediate instinct was to scream ‘help!’. Only I couldn’t speak. I felt uncontrollable, unimaginable terror.”
He spent nine months in hospital, eight of them at Stoke Mandeville spinal unit in Buckinghamshire. There were episodes of utter despair.
A tracheostomy tube was fitted into his windpipe through a hole cut in his throat: he still needs it to breathe, to stay alive. “And having the ability to breathe taken from my control was hideous. I had panic attacks when I thought I wasn’t getting enough air and was suffocating,” he remembers.
“The worst times were when I woke in the middle of the night, when it was dark and quiet and the only sounds were the machines keeping me alive.”
But, although he never retrieved any movement below his neck, his voice returned: after three months he was speaking again.
The grit, determination and competitive spirit that propelled him to the top in rugby, sustained him during his rehabilitation. His close-knit family – mother Glenda, a nurse, father Chris, a shop-fitter and two brothers Andrew and Michael – supported and encouraged, but refused to cosset him.
When he came out of hospital, to the family’s four-bedroom home in Bedfordshire, he continued with his studies with great success. With the help of a scribe, to whom he dictated his essays, he flew through A-levels and a degree.
He continues to confound expectations and is extremely close to his parents who live nearby. Ilona says: “They have such a special relationship with him and we want to preserve that.”
“Our lives may be different from other couples but all love stories are actually the same. You meet someone you can’t live without, and both your lives change for the better.” – Daily Mail