Amanda Keller has once again candidly opened up about her husband Harley Oliver’s Parkinson’s disease.
During the May 27, 2025 episode of her and Brendan Jones’ radio show, Jonesy & Amanda, Amanda said:
“I don’t want to get emotional. It’s my wedding anniversary today. And in the old days, Harley and I would have been going out to dinner tonight. But he’s not well enough to do that.”
Amanda then spoke about how when she got married and said the traditional vows, ‘For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health,’ she had no idea what those words really meant.
“In sickness and in health. And yet that’s where we are. [You have] no concept of what that means until you’re living it,” Amanda said.
“And I kind of fluctuate between taking great pride in the fight that we are alongside each other, and the strength that it takes to get up every day and still fight it and still live it. But I don’t think you can get to 35 years without the sands shifting between you beneath your feet. If you’re living life, you don’t get to cherry pick life. You engage with it as you find it. And Harley’s very stoic, but it’s hard. And, you know, I’m grateful today that here we are, 35 years and we’re still in it together. But it’s hard,” she continued.
“I never think of the what ifs because I think that’s just where madness lies. But you do fluctuate between dealing with what’s in front of you and having the absolute shits that you’re dealing with what’s in front of you. But as we’ve spoken about before, you scratch the surface. Everyone is going through a story. And to think of the journey you embark on 35 years ago, that’s a very long time. And we’ve lived a rich and wonderful life together, and we still do. But it’s not the same as the old days where we’d be going out to dinner tonight.”
Amanda finally added that despite everything, she’s “grateful” she and Harley have each other.
“I’m grateful that we still have each other. But I wasn’t going to get emotional. Anyway, happy anniversary, Harley.”
This isn’t the first time Amanda has bravely shared details about her husband’s condition.
In August 2024, she appeared on The Assembly – a documentary series that follows a team of autistic journalism students, mentored by Leigh Sales, as they interview prominent Australians.
And during the interview, one student asked Amanda if she loved her husband.
Amanda became visibly emotional and told the student, Savannah, that her question was “beautiful” before answering:
“I think I’m going to cry, because my husband is going through some stuff at the moment.
“My husband has Parkinson’s disease, and we’ve been married 34 years, and life is changing around us.
“He’s so good with it, in a way that I’m not, actually. We’re learning to find ourselves in the midst of changing circumstances, and part of me thinks – it’s easy for me to say, he’s the one going through it – but part of me thinks it’s a real privilege to be with someone long enough that you go through these changes with them.
“So yes, I love him very much, even though we’ve got some stuff going on.”
Later in the episode, another student, Evie, asked why Amanda and Harley announced his diagnosis to the public. Amnda replied that they’d done so for “a couple of reasons”.
“One is that I work on breakfast radio, and a big part of that is sharing your life – and even though it wasn’t my story to tell, it affected me too, and our lives,” she said.
“Another reason I wanted to was that I wanted to open the window into why people look at us strangely when we’re out. Harley felt that people might think he was drunk, or they’d look at me and they’d look at him and think, ‘Well, something’s not right there, what’s going on?’ I wanted to free us up by saying, ‘Here’s what’s going on.’ I think that’s why I did it.”
Amanda then admitted, “I do appreciate that by speaking publicly about it, I invite people to talk to me about it, and some days that’s hard – but I’m glad I did.”
The Piano host also got rather candid about Harley’s Parkinson’s disease in June 2024 while on the podcast Something To Talk About.
Amanda was asked how Harley is doing in light of his condition.
“Look, Harley is quite remarkable. He’s so pragmatic with this. He just gets on with it,” she replied.
“And I’ve gone through a phase of being angry because I’d say things to him like, ‘Oh, come on, stand upright’, or ‘Your voice…’
“I knew what it was; he’d been diagnosed. I knew what was going on, but I found it hard to accept. And I feel now I’m very much on the path of acceptance – or that radical acceptance, as we speak about. Some days, that’s a phrase that I’m trying to live and other days I do feel it. But we’re both on the same page now. For a while, I was kind of fighting it.”
Amanda then went on to share the lovely analogy her kinesiologist taught her. Saying that it ultimately helped her process Harley’s Parkinson’s as well as her son leaving home.
“She said to me very early on, ‘You’re in a boat beside Harley. You can’t paddle his boat, and you take his agency away by trying to.’ We’d had a similar conversation when my son left home – I still want to cry about that, too – and she said, ‘You have to let his boat go, and I said, ‘Can I be in the back of the boat?’ She said, ‘You can be in the back of the boat, but it’s his. It’s his shining light that’s navigating it.’
“It’s similar with Harley in that I know I’m trying to make everything right for everybody and a) you can’t because you’ll exhaust yourself, but b) that’s not what’s right for everybody.”
Furthermore, Amanda took to Instagram on June 3 and shared a sweet throwback picture of herself and Harley in honour of their 34th wedding anniversary.
“Occasionally, a photo pops up in your memories just when you need to see it. Harley and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary last week. This pic must have been taken just a few years later,” Amanda wrote.
“Harley’s Parkinson’s disease has sent a variety of challenges that he accepts with stoicism and grace (more so than I do). But the essence of ‘him’ and ‘us’ remains. It’s the stuff we all face as we age and grow and morph, if we’re lucky,” she added.
And in addition to those instances, during the May 20 episode of Jonesy & Amanda, she broke down in tears live on-air while discussing how Harley’s Parkinson’s stopped him from attending their son’s 21st birthday party… Or so she thought.
“Leaving the house to go to Jack’s party, I thought, you know, it’s not right that Harley can’t come. Yeah, I really felt lonely thinking it’s our son’s 21st, but how hard it is for Harley and how much he would have loved to have been there,” Amanda said.
“So there we are, having a great time. The speeches are about to start and my friend Kate said to me, ‘There’s Harley.’ And I looked over. And I know what it cost him to be there. He and our friend Pam and our driver friend Cole had conspired to get Harley there for the speeches. And it was so moving,” she continued.
“And a lot of people were shocked because they hadn’t seen Harley for a while. But I know what it cost him to get there. And he said to me, ‘How could I not be here?'”
Amanda first publicly shared her husband’s Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in October 2023. However, she noted that he actually received the diagnosis six years prior.
During an episode of the Double A Chattery podcast, an emotional Amanda revealed she avoided sharing the sad news until it felt like the right time.
“Harley has Parkinson’s disease,” the Living Room host said. “This has impacted him and us and the way we live our lives in many different ways.”
Amanda first realised something was wrong when she noticed her partner dragging his foot around the house, as well as his hands shaking. While Harley put it down to an old cricket injury, Amanda knew something more sinister was at play.
Upon getting the official diagnosis, Amanda confessed she and Harley were “completely numb”.
“At the beginning, I was cross with him,” the presenter confessed. “I thought, ‘Why isn’t he fighting it?’ But I’ve come to see you can’t control this. I’ve become kinder and sadder.”
Amanda then brought in her husband to chat about his disease.
“It’s been a journey between us,” Harley said to his wife. “It’s a constant thing; it’s every day. Because it’s a progressive disease, you can’t tell how long it’s going to last before it really starts to bite.”
Harley went on to say he’s “lucky” that the disease is “so slow”. Because of that, he can develop tactics to fight it, adding that there are other people a lot worse off than him.
The emotional interview ended with the couple trading words of support and love.
“You can’t choose your dismount, but I always choose you,” Amanda said to her husband.
Amanda first met Harley while she was a researcher for the children’s show Simon Townsend’s Wonder World!. Her future husband was a producer on the show. The pair married in 1989 and now share two sons, Liam and Jack.
“Amanda is a very full-on mum,” Harley told The Weekly in 2022. “But she’s a very natural mum as well. She’s good at talking to them. And getting them to talk back, which is a skill!”
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