Listen to the episode here:
I was lucky enough to sit down for a new episode of The Australian Women’s Weekly Love Stories podcast with giddily-in-love couple Rob Mills and Georgie Tunny. The pair have been living in separate cities for a couple of months. Rob is in Melbourne, where he’s treading the boards in Waitress: The Musical, and Georgie is in Sydney, where she’s fronting Network Ten’s Weekend News Bulletin.
For them, the chance to do the podcast together in one city was like a prized date, a chance to reconnect physically. They held hands throughout our chat as they excitedly spilled their plans for a continued life together. And yes, that does include their plans for finally getting their wedding underway, close to five years after Rob popped the question.
What followed was a gorgeous conversation that included memories of their early dating days, how they navigate conflict, and their plans for starting a family.
Picture this. A dark-haired beauty lies sleeping. Enter a handsome prince, who sweeps in with a swoon-worthy kiss to wake her up. However, instead of being in an enchanted forest, surrounded by moping dwarves as a wicked witch looms nearby with her poisoned apple, this is all taking place in a digital world where Rob Mills slid into Georgie Tunny’s DMs after being bewitched while watching her on ABC News Breakfast.
For anyone who has bemoaned the fact that our brave new digital world can stifle organic connection, Georgie and Rob are here to prove you wrong. In fact, if it wasn’t for the invention of mobile phones, Google and yes, social media, there is a high chance their relationship may never have been sparked, let alone stood the test of time.
And for Georgie, if she had to compare it to an old-fashioned fairytale, it’s Snow White that she would choose.
“When it comes to love, I feel like a lot of my life – until I met Robert – I was just sleeping through,” she tells The Weekly, as the pair star in a whimsically romantic photo shoot before recording a new episode of our Love Stories podcast.
“I was so bad at all the things. I didn’t put myself out there. I never really went on dates, and I was awful at online dating. I would be on the apps and treat it like a game. I would never take it out of the chat, would never meet up with people.”
“Until Prince Charming came along, is that what you’re saying?” Rob asks, jokingly.
“Yes,” Georgie says, smiling but also serious. “It’s like … you woke me up.”
Rob industriously utilised several online tools to land his first date with Georgie back in 2018. Having tired of dating apps and after spotting his dream girl on TV, he first hit the internet to ask Google: “Who is the new ABC sports reporter?”
Finding out her name was Georgie Tunny, he then looked up her social media accounts, combing through them to see if they had any mutual friends he could use as an ‘in’. Next he sent that initial DM, offering to show the newly Melbourne-based Georgie the best coffee shops in town, before signing off with “I’m not a weirdo”.
“And then she left me on read for three days,” Rob laughs now.
For Georgie, her hesitation came down to an unlucky-in-love past – as well as taking the time to do her own internet due diligence to check this was the actual Rob Mills.
“My instinct isn’t that someone would be interested in me immediately,” she says of her slow reaction. “I’ve just always been the girl who was the friend. I never thought when I was growing up that I was particularly attractive or anything like that. So when Robert was so overt with his, well, pursuing me …”
“Courting,” Rob interjects.
“Sorry, courting,” she corrects herself. “Let’s use the fairytale language. It took me a little while to be accepting of it, because it was just so new. Like, I was always the one who fell hardest. I was the one who sort of got my heart broken. I was the one who was broken up with. I feel like I was always the one who got in too deep very early on.”
Luckily, a friend prompted Georgie to take a chance. After four or five months of back-and-forth messaging, they finally had that real-life date. And it’s safe to say that love – just like in the old-fashioned fairytales – performed its magic.
Not that they haven’t had to work at things along the way. From the start, Rob and Georgie’s schedules have not been particularly conducive to dating. As one of the country’s most in-demand theatre talents, Rob works nights. Georgie, when they met, was working early mornings in breakfast television (more on what that has inspired later). And so they’d snatch precious mid-mornings for quick catch-ups.
“I highly recommend sober dating,” Rob says of their early courtship. “I would pick her up from work and we’d go for a walk around the Botanic Gardens or for a coffee. It was great because there’s no hiding behind alcohol to get your confidence up. I think sober dating is excellent.”
“Neither of us beat around the bush,” Georgie adds of their early dates. “We were having all of the big conversations immediately.”
Was it, we ask, a side-product of all those virtual conversations before they spent any physical time together?
“Face to face, it can be hard for people to communicate,” Rob says of the beauty of modern technology. “For Georgie and I, sometimes we do find ourselves interstate, away from each other. And sometimes you can’t say the things that you want to say over the phone. So at times we’ve actually found ourselves texting each other some of the things we’re finding it hard to say. And that’s been quite helpful because it assists the conversation later on when we do pick up the phone and have a chat.”
It was very early on those mid-morning walk-and-talks that the two realised there was a definite spark.
For Georgie, it was two months into dating when she had her “aha!” moment that Rob was the one.
They’d not yet had the boyfriend-girlfriend conversation, she recalls, but she had been offered a dream job that would take her from Melbourne back to her hometown of Brisbane. Yet despite the fact that it was seemingly everything she’d ever wanted professionally, she found herself reluctant to say yes.
Sitting down with her ABC News Breakfast colleague Virginia Trioli – one of only two colleagues in whom she’d confided about her fledgling romance – Georgie asked for some advice about what to do.
After telling her to weigh up the pros and cons, Virginia asked, “Well, where does Robert fit into this? If you move to Brisbane, are you going to stay together? Or do you want to stay here, but you are not going to stay together?”
“Before that conversation,” Georgie says, turning to Rob now, “I hadn’t really let myself factor you in. In the end it was an easy decision to stay in Melbourne, and the right one.”
She may not have said yes to that particular job, but as their relationship progressed, so too did the far-flung opportunities which have presented themselves. Over their close-to-eight-year relationship, the pair have lived in separate states and sometimes separate countries as they pursue their career dreams.
As we speak today the couple – who announced their engagement in late 2021 – are juggling Rob being in Melbourne for Waitress: The Musical while Georgie is at home in Sydney. They admit that apart from COVID lockdowns and a stint competing on The Amazing Race in 2025, they are more often miles apart than together, even as they continue growing closer emotionally.
“Over the years I’ve realised the importance of having that time apart from your partner,” says Rob, adding that they try to adhere to a maximum of three weeks when it comes to physical separation.
“It is actually really healthy to miss your partner. The distance is healthy. And we both champion each other’s careers.”
Currently for Rob, that comes in the shape of championing Georgie’s writing debut – a satirical ‘chick lit’ novel in the vein of The Devil Wears Prada. Over To You is set in the world of morning television, and tells a tale of three best friends trying to make it in the cutthroat industry without doing each other over in the process.
“This story has been lived in my head for the best part of three years,” she says. “When I was in the writing process, I literally gave Robert every word, every iteration.”
“And it was always very good,” Rob says with a look of admiration at his fiancée. “She’s an incredible writer. I laughed so much.”
It’s clear as we spend time together that he is Georgie’s biggest fan. It’s why, he confides, when the time comes to start their family – which they hope to do in the not-so-distant future – he plans to be a stay-at-home dad so she can continue to blaze those career trails.
“Georgie is far more talented than me,” he says with genuine pride. “I can see the writing on the wall.”
Rob adds that he’s always been paternal. As a kid he used to earn pocket money babysitting, and he’s a very proud uncle. Plus, the fact that most of his work is at night means that it makes more sense for him to be home with kids during the day.
Like many career-driven women, Georgie has been torn over the right time to start a family. But over the New Year break, she tells us now, she had a light-bulb moment.
“I had this realisation of, ‘Oh, I don’t have to achieve everything before I have kids’,” she says. “That was a huge moment for me.
“I’ve always wanted to see Robert as a dad. Even when we first started dating, I was like, ‘You as a dad would be just the greatest thing ever.’ For Robert to have a little him? I can’t deprive the world of that, let alone myself.”
So, we ask, does that mean a wedding is also on the horizon?
“We call it a promise ring now,” Georgie says, laughing at the length of time it’s taken since the engagement ring first graced her finger.
“Because it’s a promise to get married at some point,” adds Rob. “I think we’ll have some time maybe early next year. Actually, I’ve just signed up for another musical, so that keeps me busy for the next year. After that – maybe June?”
Until that time, or whenever a non-busy period presents itself to organise a wedding, they plan to keep enjoying their modern-day romance while loving each other through good times and bad.
“I have the utmost admiration for Georgie in everything she does,” says Rob. “She’s smart, she’s thoughtful, she’s kind, she’s very funny. I think there’s something about admiring your partner in whatever they do. And then it’s also learning to accept the things that you cannot change. Compromise is a common promise.”
“I think what drew us together – and has kept us together – is our mutual curiosity,” adds Georgie. “Not just for each other, but for the world around us.
“The Robert who I knew when he first slid into my DMs was a ‘reality TV guy’. Like, I thought he was very talented – I like musicals, so I would see him in those – but I thought that his public persona was him. Then it probably took only three dates and I was like, ‘Oh, he’s one of the best people I’ve ever met.’ He’s just so considerate. He’s generous. He offers acts of service without even thinking about it. His default setting is to help.”
“I’m basically your wing attack,” laughs Rob as we sign off. “I’m here if you need me.”
Listen to Rob Mills and Georgie Tunny’s modern-day fairytale in full on The Australian Women’s Weekly Love Stories podcast.
Over To You by Georgie Tunny, Allen & Unwin, is available now.
Waitress: The Musical opens in Sydney in August. Find out more at waitressthemusical.com.au
A version of this feature originally appeared in the July 2026 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Subscribe so you never miss an issue.
Watch the episode here:
