Love in the Limelight

Busting the "perfect couple" myth, influential duo Jane Lau and Ma Han Pin open up about trust, respect, and staying true to what matters in an unpredictable world

- Tania Jayatilaka

"We've been photographed so often together that people say we're starting to look alike," laughs Ma Han Pin with a playful glance at images of himself and his wife, Jane Lau (or Jane Chuck, as she goes by) during this photo shoot with Tatler. Looking at the power pair standing poised in front of the camera, it's easy to see what he means. It's perhaps more fitting to say that the couple exudes the same upbeat energy and easygoing confidence stemming from their similar temperaments.

"We're very much alike in that we're both very chill," Lau remarks. "We each listen to the other person and we respect each other's opinions. But this didn't happen in one day. Over time, we sort of grew together and learned to understand where the other person is coming from."

Coincidentally, Lau and Ma's first meeting was uneventful. Lau, who started blogging at the age of 14, was a social media darling with a massive and loyal fanbase. Ma admits that he was hardly even active on social media before he met her. They knew of each other through a mutual friend but didn't hit it off until after Ma had returned to Malaysia from studying in the UK. "A friend told me, 'You know that girl, the famous one? She just broke up.' Then they asked if I wanted to ask her out," he recalls. "When I came back from the

UK, I messaged her on Instagram (you don’t really need phone numbers anymore) and said, ‘Hey, we have this mutual friend, we met that one time, do you remember me?’ Of course she was being nice and said yes.”