Who are Tony and Barrie Drewitt-Barlow and how did they become millionaires?
Plus how the former couple first crossed paths
BARRIE and Tony Drewitt-Barlow became known when they became the first gay men in the UK to father children through surrogacy.
The couple who have now split, are self-made multi-millionaires, but how did they get where they are today?
Who are Tony and Barrie Drewitt-Barlow?
Barrie Drewett-Barlow and ex-husband Tony were Britain's first gay dads, fathering a twin boy and girl through surrogacy.
The couple met in 1987 when Tony stopped at a petrol station in Manchester to ask for directions.
At the time, Tony had won the runner up prize in the the New Scientist of the year award.
The couple split in 2019, after Barrie confirmed he had fallen for daughter Saffron’s ex Scott.
How did they become millionaires?
The two men have a combined wealth of £200 million.
They have made their money from various business ventures including a trans-Atlantic surrogacy business and a global medical research company.
They also earn cash from real estate.
In 2021 Tony announced he received a $90million windfall courtesy of Bitcoin after investing $350,000 in 2015.
How many children do Tony and Barrie Drewitt-Barlow have?
Barrie and Tony were together for 11 years before they decided they wanted to have children.
According to their website, they had spoken about it for years but had never done anything about it.
First, the millionaire couple looked at adoption with Essex County Council, but they then went on to make history, in 1999, after fathering twins Saffron and Aspen with a surrogate mum in California.
The pair went to court to be allowed to have same-sex parents on the birth certificates as “parent one” and “parent two” instead of “mother and father”.
It was a historic case for the LGBTQ community.
Saffron and Aspen were conceived using the donor eggs of one woman, Tracie McCune, and were then carried in the womb of another woman, Rosalind Bellany.
Although Barrie and Tony each fathered a child, they have never revealed which dad is the biological father of which twin as they want to be equal parents.
They later went on to have son Orlando and twin boys Jasper and Dallas born in February 2010.
Orlando born in August 2003 is a triplet to Saffron and Aspen and his embryo was on kept on ice.
Their kids call Barrie "Daddy" and Tony "Dad".