Samantha Cameron has confirmed for the first time the key role she played in persuading her husband to legalise gay marriage.
David Cameron admitted today he was "sort of fiddling around" with minor changes until his wife stepped in and said full same-sex marriage should be allowed.
In a heartfelt interview today, Mrs Cameron told ITV's This Morning: "I work in the fashion industry so I obviously have a lot of friends who are gay.
"Some of whom found it very easy to come out to their parents at an early age, age some of which had it very difficult and it took a long time.
“If one of my children was gay I would hate them to have to go through that."
Asked if she influenced the decision she remarked "I think always..." before adding: "I always feel that as a parent anything you can do to make that as easy as possible in someone's life is important.
"And I strongly felt that being able to marry was one of those things that could make change."
The Camerons have three living children, Nancy, Florence and Elwen, alongside Ivan who died after being born with a rare condition.
Same-sex marriage was legalised in 2013 after Mr Cameron went to war with large parts of the Conservative Party to introduce the reform.
In his memoirs For The Record, Mr Cameron admitted his wife had a "forceful" reaction to his half-hearted support when civil partnerships arrived under Labour in 2004.
He said there were "many chats" with his wife, who had "for a long time" been saying: "A civil partnership is really a marriage, so why don't you call it a marriage and then it's properly equal?"
Today Mr Cameron told ITV: "I think on things like gay marriage, which I'm hugely proud of... I was sort of fiddling round with changes to try to make things more equal.
"And Samantha was the one saying look, you know, it doesn't undermine our marriage for gay people to get married. Why not do the whole thing?
"I took a journey to get there. I supported civil partnerships and thought that sort of fixed the problem of gay people not being able to give property to each other or having hospital visiting rights.
"But it took me a while to get to the position of realising what we really needed was full equality. You know, marriage is a great institution."
There was a more awkward moment when Mrs Cameron was asked if she ever attacked him over the EU referendum mess.
She replied: "Umm... I don't think so... no... umm.. err... err... not at all.
"Because it was such a long... it happened over quite a long period so you're always up to speed on the reasons why he's doing everything he's doing."
