Local singer Kelvin Tan met his wife playing goalball

SINGAPORE - It was the game of goalball that led local singer Kelvin Tan down the aisle.

The 40-year-old married occupational therapist Inez Hung, 29, on Jan 2 at Parkroyal on Kitchener Road in an intimate ceremony of around 100 guests of family and close friends.

The winner of singing competition Project Superstar in 2005 tells The Straits Times that they met while playing goalball, a sport designed for the visually impaired, in 2016.

Tan, who was born blind as a result of a condition known as Leber's congenital amaurosis, represented Singapore at the Asean Para Games in goalball in 2015. His wife's younger sister, Joan Hung, was on the women's squad that year. The sisters are both visually impaired.

"My wife had not started working then so we had a lot of time to spend together alongside her sister Joan, who is like a matchmaker of sorts to us. The three of us hung out and worked out together a lot and feelings developed from there," he says.

Tan is currently on the national Paralympic team for tenpin bowling while the Hung sisters are on the national Paralympic team for goalball.

He says of his wife: "I'm very comfortable spending time with her, it feels very natural to be with her and we enjoy similar sporting activities together."

The couple got engaged in 2020 and are currently awaiting the keys to their four-room Build-To-Order flat in Tengah, which is slated for completion next year (2023). Tan says they bought the place before he got down on one knee.

Recalling the proposal, he says: "It wasn't a crazily romantic proposal or anything but it was the first time in my life that I actually went and bought flowers for someone."

As for the future, Tan says he looks forward to having children eventually, though they have yet to decide on the timing.

He adds: "I wasn't always a big kids person. But I used to be a guide for Ngee Ann Polytechnic's Dialogue In The Dark and through that I interacted with many children and young people. Slowly, I changed my mind. I guess it also has to do with age and entering a new phase of life. I would be happy to be a dad."

Fans of Tan will be glad to know that he still loves singing. His full-time job is as a librarian and Braille transcriber at Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped.

He recently appeared on the Mediacorp singing competition Spop Wave! as a guest performer.

"I'm still open to doing more music and singing on television if I have the opportunity and time to do so."