Ray Meagher & Kate Ritchie Reunite at TV WEEK Logie Awards – Fans Go Wild!

Fans were given a heavy dose of nostalgia at last year’s TV WEEK Logie Awards when Home And Away’s Ray Meagher and Kate Ritchie were reunited on screen for the first time in years. And suffice to say, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

“It’s always so lovely to see Ray,” Kate, 46, tells TV WEEK.

“We were just saying how we have to make time 
to catch up properly,” she continues, with Ray adding that they “always try to do it at least once a year” but haven’t managed to in a while as their schedules have been “a little crazy lately”.

“You did come to the 80th that Channel Seven threw me, though,” he says. “It was so nice of you to come to a silly old bugger’s birthday party, too, given how you were filming 18 things at once.”

Kate also made time in her schedule to appear alongside Ray in his emotional episode of This Is Your Life in 2022.

Holding onto his hand, Kate recalled tales from their decades spent on screen as Sally Fletcher and Alf Stewart.

“Ray is really so much of what I learned as a person, but also a performer,” Kate says in the episode. “And for both of us, we’ve played those characters so long that there is so much of us within them.

“So when I watched that footage … 
I actually see two friends. He’s watched me grow from a girl into a woman, and he’s really proud of me. So I’m glad I’ve made you proud.”

“And that still stands,” a visibly moved Ray replies.

Together Through Thick & Thin

Audiences were first introduced to the formidable Alf and shy eight-year-old Sally in the long-running drama’s pilot episode in 1988. And during their tumultuous
25 years together on the show, they went through 
more than their fair share of drama.

Sally was by Alf’s side as his wife of 13 years, Ailsa (Judy Nunn), tragically died from a heart attack in 2000, and helped convince him to have life-saving surgery when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour three years later.

Meanwhile, Alf was one of the first people to rush to the hospital after Sally was stabbed by troubled student Rocco (Ian Meadows) in 2006, and was there to walk her down the aisle at her disastrous wedding to Flynn (Joel McIlroy) three years earlier.

And yet, out of their thousands of scenes together over the years, it was Kate’s final one
with Ray before she waved goodbye to the Bay
in 2008 that stands out as the pair’s favourite.

“We had a scene on the beach – and Kate’s character always used to call me Mr Stewart, 
never anything else – and I said something 
along the lines of, ‘Sal, it’s about time. Call me 
Alf, aye?’” Ray tells TV WEEK. “And she says something like…”

“‘Thanks Alf, but you’ll always be Mr Stewart 
to me,’” a misty-eyed Kate interjects.

Moving On

While Ray remains one of the most beloved characters in Home And Away – he’s also the 
only original cast member still standing – Kate 
has defied the odds of becoming typecast and has continued to flourish in the entertainment industry since leaving the show more than 15 years ago.

She’s dipped her toes into everything from 
radio – she currently hosts Nova’s breakfast show alongside Ryan “Fitzy” Fitzgerald and Michael “Wippa” Wipfli – to reality TV, serving as a judge 
on Australia’s Got Talent in 2022, and next up will appear in ABC’s new groundbreaking series The Role Of A Lifetime.

She also shared in a TV WEEK Logie nomination for Best Miniseries Or Telemovie for Channel Seven’s gripping thriller The Claremont Murders in 2023.

For Ray, it’s been 
an absolute joy to watch his dear friend continue 
to flourish in the industry and he heralds Kate’s performance in The Claremont Murders 
as “fantastic”.

“If there ever was 
a natural, she’s standing right there,” he said. 
“Kate just picks up the script and it happens. 
It drives me nuts – it shouldn’t be that easy.”

Meanwhile, Ray has been busy racking up milestones of his own, with the TV veteran celebrating his 80th birthday with TV WEEK in July last year.

“I don’t see it [turning 80] as any big deal. I feel very grateful and fortunate I’ve lasted this long. And when I look back on my misspent youth, at times I think, ‘God knows how,’” he tells us.

The celebrations were made all the sweeter, he says, particularly after he suffered a major health scare in 2020.

“I was just walking up a hill one day and felt a little shortness of breath rather than pain,” Ray recalls. 
“I thought, ‘What the bloody hell is going on? This 
is ridiculous.’”

At the time, Ray and wife Gilly had their bags packed for a road trip to Queensland. But his cardiologist quickly vetoed that and, in Ray’s words, “got the chainsaw out”.

Was he a bit worried at the time?

“Yes, is the honest answer to that,” he admits candidly. “But in the fair dinkum department, 
I’m a bit philosophical about those things. You’ve 
got to trust somebody whose job it is to try to 
bring you through.

“And lately, everything’s good health-wise. I’m 
in pretty good nick for a young bloke of 80.”

Reunited In 2025

Though the pair are succeeding on their own paths, Ray admits he’d happily still “welcome Kate back 
[to Home And Away] with open arms tomorrow”.

And it seems as if fans would also love her to return, with rumours swirling almost every week.

“They didn’t kill me off, so they [the show’s producers] have left the door open,” Kate teases.

Fingers crossed there’s another more permanent Home And Away reunion in store 
for these two fan favourites in 2025!

Fans were given a heavy dose of nostalgia at last year’s TV WEEK Logie Awards when Home And Away’s Ray Meagher and Kate Ritchie were reunited on screen for the first time in years. And suffice to say, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. “It’s always so lovely to see Ray,” Kate, 46, tells TV WEEK. “We…