Who are Joe Tate’s mum and dad in Emmerdale? His connection to Noah Dingle explained
How did he die? And what happened to Joe’s mum, Rachel?
Joe gave his younger brother Noah a watch in the soap this week, saying it belonged to their dad, Chris, and he wanted Noah to have it. There’s a long history with Joe Tate, his mum and dad in Emmerdale, years before Noah came along.
While the jury’s still out on whether Joe Tate can be trusted or not, there’s no denying that he’s pulling out all the stops to make it up to his brother.
But how are the young men related? Who was their dad? Did Emmerdale’s Joe Tate share a mum and dad with Noah? And where is he now?
Emmerdale’s Joe Tate was born to mum Rachel and dad Chris
Joe was born in 1995, to mum Rachel Hughes and dad Chris Tate. When Rachel was heavily pregnant, her stepdad Joe Sugden was killed in a car accident and the shock sent her into labour. She named the baby Joseph in his memory.
Annie Sugden – Joe’s mum – inherited his share of the farm and gifted it to baby Joseph for him to receive on his 18th birthday. Whether that means he now owns some of the village, we’re not sure!
Where is Joe’s mum, Rachel, now?
After divorcing Chris, single mum Rachel met widowed teacher Graham Clark. She fell hard for him and he seemed perfect for her.
But slowly he began controlling Rachel in small, then bigger, ways. He made her change her clothes and her hair, and even rearranged the furniture in her cottage.
When Rachel found a photo of Graham’s late wife Rebecca, she was shocked to see he was trying to make her look more like Rebecca.
Graham’s abusive behaviour stepped up, and he even got poor Rachel arrested, and suspended from work.
He wanted them to move away though Rachel wasn’t keen and she started to plan to leave him.
She confronted him on a picnic, only for them to argue as she twigged that Rebecca hadn’t taken her own life but had instead been murdered – by Graham!
But it was too late. Graham pushed Rachel over the cliff to her death.
Joe’s dad Chris Tate
Chris Tate was Frank’s scheming, manipulative son. He hated his stepmum, Kim, and spent a lot of time and energy trying to outwit her. But he never quite succeeded.
After Frank’s death, Kim kept a share of the Tate businesses, much to Chris’s annoyance. He tried to take revenge on her but she clobbered him with a paperweight and escaped the village with her then baby son, James.
Chris and his wives
Chris was married to Kathy Merrick, whose second husband Dave Glover had a steamy affair with Kim. He then married Rachel, and after their divorce he married Charity Dingle, who was 12 years his junior.
Chris and Charity’s marriage was fiery! When Debbie Jones was revealed to be Cain and Charity’s daughter, it led Chris to be paranoid that Charity was cheating on him.
Which did actually turn out to be true!
Did Charity murder Chris Tate in Emmerdale?
When Chris was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour, he started to plot. He started spending his money as quickly as he could, so Charity couldn’t get her hands on it.
He invited Charity for a drink to toast the ‘death of their marriage’ and then poisoned himself, setting her up for murder! His last word was “whore”.
Charity’s pregnancy
At the time of Chris’s death, Charity was pregnant, though Chris didn’t know. Charity wasn’t sure if her baby daddy was Chris, Cain, or her cousin Marlon, who she’d slept with once (urgh – talk about keeping it in the family).
She had baby Noah in prison after she was sentenced to life for killing Chris, and found out Noah was in fact a Tate after all, and not a double Dingle.
Always one for a deal, Charity agreed that she would hand over the tot to Chris’s sister, Zoe, in exchange for £10,000 and the proof that Chris killed himself that would set her free. Zoe agreed. She renamed Noah Christopher and planned to adopt him.
But Zoe already had her own daughter Jean, and the care of her orphaned nephew, Joseph. Plus she suffered from mental health issues and she was responsible for running Home Farm, too. Her application was turned down.
Charity was given the choice of having Noah adopted by a stranger or raising him herself and she chose to raise him herself.
Meanwhile Joseph and his cousin Jean, went to live in New Zealand when Zoe decided to start a new life.
Emmerdale’s Joe Tate shares dad with Noah Dingle but not his mum
Chris was dead by the time Noah was born in 2004, and in 2005, Charity took Noah to live in Spain for a while.
By the time they returned to the village in 2009, Joe was long gone.
So the brothers hadn’t really met before Joe came back to Emmerdale as an adult in 2017.
Emmerdale usually airs weeknights at 7.30pm on ITV, with an early release at 7am on ITVX.
Classic Emmerdale usually airs weekdays at 6am and 6.30am, plus 1.40pm and 2.10pm on ITV3.
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