Steve Irwin’s widow Terri has recalled the moment she first laid eyes on the Crocodile Hunter while a crocodile was actively trying to attack him.
Terri, who was visiting from Eugene, Oregon, had arrived at Australia Zoo just two days after Irwin, then in his late twenties, had taken control of the park. She was on vacation when she watched Steve perform a crocodile demonstration that quickly went off the rails. The pair would later marry in 1992 and spend 14 years together before Steve was killed by a stingray in 2006.
In footage from one of his episodes that circulated on Reddit, Steve described locking eyes with Terri amid the crowd. “I looked up and our eyes met, and my heart just went ‘bang bang bang bang’, it just started thumping. It was love at first sight,” he said. He acknowledged the moment sounded like something from a “love novel,” but insisted: “It’s true!”
The distraction nearly cost him. Steve recalled snapping back to reality: “Next thing, ‘woah!’ I remembered where I was. Agro’s trying to kill me.” Agro was the name of the crocodile involved in the demonstration. Unable to maintain focus on the giant reptile, Steve wrapped up the show early and went to speak with Terri.
The feeling was mutual. Terri, who had worked as a vet technician at an emergency veterinary hospital before meeting Steve, later shared her own memory of that first encounter. “I thought, ‘this man is the most incredible guy I’ve ever seen. He’s probably married, he’s got to be taken’,” she said. He was not.
Steve described the romance that followed as going “ballistic.” Terri relocated to Australia, married him within months of their meeting, and began working alongside him at the zoo they would build into a global destination. Together they welcomed two children, Bindi and Robert, both of whom have continued their father’s conservation work.
The Australia Zoo website still notes the encounter as “love at first sight.” The institution, located on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, has remained the family’s base of operations and public platform.
Reddit users who watched the resurfaced clip expressed emotional reactions to the couple’s recollections. “Not me crying just seeing this clip (he really was THE role model),” one commenter wrote. Another admitted they were “full on ugly crying at work,” while a third described the Irwins as “absolutely top notch humans.”
Steve and Terri’s partnership became central to The Crocodile Hunter, the wildlife documentary series that made Steve an international star and turned the family into household names. The show ran from 1996 until Steve’s death in September 2006, when a stingray barb pierced his chest while he was filming an underwater sequence for a documentary project on the Great Barrier Reef. He was 44.
Bindi and Robert have both since become public figures in their own right, continuing wildlife advocacy through television appearances, social media, and conservation work at the zoo their parents developed.