Dreams are made of this...

Michael Rowland has the best job in the world, he’s head over heels in love, and, adds wife Nicki, is the daggiest of dads. But a freak accident at 19 cast a pall of insecurity over the breakfast TV host, he tells Juliet Rieden.

- Juliet Rieden

Michael Rowland says his knees literally “quivered” when he proposed to the love of his life, fellow journalist Nicki Webber. It was late December back in 2001. Oh what a night! to quote a seasoned Frankie Valli song.

The ABC News Breakfast anchor is a self-confessed music tragic, so it’s tempting to add a soundtrack to his life story, although his song of choice would be slightly more blokey. He cites The Rolling Stones, Midnight Oil, The Beatles and Cold Chisel among his top of the pops. He actually took Nicki to a Stones concert on the night son Tom was due. “We hadn’t bought tickets naively thinking the baby would be born on its due date,” recalls Nicki. But when a colleague couldn’t use their tickets Michael couldn’t resist. “He absolutely loved it … I was uncomfortable and unborn Tom spent the whole concert kicking.”

“Michael also croons Frank [Sinatra],” Nicki adds. He can’t hold a tune, though he thinks otherwise, and to prove it gives The Weekly team a few bars of Fly Me to the Moon as he corrals his family for our photo shoot in their home.

Yup, he can’t sing. Nicki says Michael is the quintessential “daggy dad” and right on cue his footy-mad son Tom, 16, who plays for home club Altona Vikings, and daughter Eleanor, 15, who has a beautiful singing voice and performs in school musical theatre productions, roll their eyes.

“It was the most nervous I’ve been in my life,” says Michael, continuing his marriage proposal story. “I’d booked a table at the restaurant at the top of the Sofitel Hotel. It has big views over Melbourne, although that was the last thing on my mind in the elevator on the way up there.”