Terri Irwin says her first encounter with Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin was a ‘fluke’

Terri Irwin has described her first meeting with Steve Irwin – the man who would later become her husband, revealing that the pair almost never crossed paths. 

In Saturday’s episode of Crikey! It’s the Irwins, the 55-year-old described how fate brought the pair together. 

‘I was really lucky meeting Steve. It was such a fluke,’ she said of the encounter, which occurred in 1991. 

‘I mean visiting Australia when I was 27 years old, driving past what was then the Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park.

‘And just happening to go in. And on that day Steve happened to be doing the croc demonstration’ she explained. 

Terri was taken in by Steve’s passion for animals, revealing: ‘When he was talking about crocodiles I thought, ‘Wow this guy loves wildlife’. 

‘I really wanted to get to know him. And he happened to be single,’ she said. 

Terri added cheekily: ‘[He] fell desperately in love with me because it turns out he happened to be only human!’

Both Terri and Steve had in the past described their first meeting as ‘love at first sight’ – with Steve saying that his heart began pounding the moment he saw Terri in the crowd. 

The pair became engaged just four months after they first met, and went on to marry just four months after that in 1992, in a ceremony held in Terri’s native Oregon. 

After their eight-month whirlwind romance the couple had two children, Bindi, now 21, and Robert, now 16. 

Steve was killed by a stingray, aged 44, in a freak accident in 2006.