The rescue from anxieties and his wife's refusal: 5 things you didn't know about Ofer Shechter

Ofer Shechter was identified for years as the eternal bachelor and a symbol of freedom in the entertainment industry. This morning (Wednesday), he was a guest on Itay Segal's podcast from the ALL in network and provided a rare glimpse into his new life. At 45, married to Ksenia and a father of two, Shechter revealed particularly personal and surprising details. Here are five of them:

His parents left him with the neighbor when he was a year old - and flew abroad

The return to the moshav brings Shechter face-to-face with stories from the past. The neighbor, Riki, recently revealed to him that when he was just a one-year-old baby, his parents flew to the USA and left him with her for a week or two. In the interview, he admitted he was in shock at the discovery:

"Think about a friend telling you they are leaving their kids with you... I am trying to calm down from this."

He holds shares in a beverage company and a jamboree chain

As part of economic planning for the children's future, he is invested in various businesses outside the acting world: he has a partnership in the beverage company "Grooper," and he owns jamboree and bowling complexes that "work for him."

His love story started with a double refusal (and ended in a whirlwind pregnancy)

The acquaintance with his wife Ksenia sounds like a movie script. Shechter said that he saw her picture on a mutual friend's Instagram, but when he asked to be introduced - Ksenia refused. He found her on Facebook and wrote to her, but she did not answer. A year passed, he wrote again - and was ignored again.

Only a year later did she suddenly send him a message. From there, everything happened at a dizzying pace: after three days he told her he was in love with her, after three weeks he suggested they bring a child into the world, and within three months Ksenia moved in with him and was already pregnant.

"We did everything backwards. First I got her pregnant, then we got married, and now we are getting to know each other," said Shechter.

Fatherhood completely cured him of anxieties

While many parents experience an influx of anxiety with the birth of their children, for Shechter, the opposite process occurred. Someone who previously feared he would not be physically and mentally capable of raising children found that fatherhood "cleansed" him of anxieties:

"I was cleansed of every anxiety. I don't feel fear, because they taught me that a child doesn't need much - they mainly need love and food."

The children made him give up five years of veganism

Someone who was previously connected to a healthy lifestyle and strictly adhered to veganism for five years admitted that fatherhood broke him. "I just couldn't do it anymore," he shared honestly, explaining that when the children eat pizza in the evening, it's hard not to follow suit - which also led to emotional eating after they fall asleep and a gain of a few kilograms.