Love me Tendy! MY ONLINE SOULMATE GREW UP IN GLORIAVALE

Their first date was memorable

- Cloe Willetts

Joe Evans was new to online dating when he walked into a café in Christchurch almost four years ago to meet a beautiful blonde he’d matched with on Tinder.

The tiler had casually chatted to a few women on the dating app, but they weren’t like Tendy Cooper. Joe was attracted to the solo mum’s independence and drive, and the fact she was as happy single as she was ready to commit.

But he hadn’t expected to be hit with a bombshell about her past on their first date. Tendy – named Tender-Joy at birth – was born in Gloriavale.

“Tendy dropped the bomb on me straight away to see how I’d react, but I can’t remember my thoughts or feelings because I must’ve been so surprised,” laughs Joe, 33, who quickly fell for her bubbly personality.

“It didn’t scare me off. If anything I was more interested in hearing the story behind it because all I knew was what I’d seen on TV.”

Tendy told her curious date that although she was born in the West Coast religious community, she left at age three. Her father Phil Cooper – son of Gloriavale founder Neville Cooper, aka Hopeful Christian – escaped with his wife Prayer and their five children. They later had another son and daughter.

“When I met Joe I wanted to be upfront from day dot because you either accept it or you don’t,” says the graphic designer, 33, whose mum returned to the commune when she was a kid, and lives there now with Tendy’s eldest and youngest sisters.

“Whoever my partner would be had to accept that part of my life, since I still have a lot of connections to Gloriavale and visit my family there.”

Tendy’s hunter-fisherman beau was the first date she told about her unique birthplace, which her father took her out of during an intricate escape plan.