Graphic designer Andrew Hinge and Emelia Vimalasiri, business development manager for the Canberra Convention Bureau, will join five other couples in group one of the competition when season five starts on Monday, January 27.

They have been given the label "newly dating". The couple prefers to call themselves "the sparkly ones".

“We're here to put Canberra on the map,” Emelia, 29, said.

“We're really colourful and bright – we're not boring people like you would expect from Canberra.”

Prime has so far kept the couple under wraps, releasing only a publicity interview and promos that show the pair to be having an "interesting" home restaurant.

The release says the couple have been dating since last February after first meeting in October, 2012 at an eating club. Emelia and her friends helped to set up the club to extend their network. But "sparks really flew" when Andrew attended Emelia's Halloween party.

“She was dressed as Scary Spice and she looked goooood,” Andrew, 32, said in the network interview. “I liked what I saw.”

Cementing their mutual love of Canberra, the couple's first dates were all about the outdoors.

“We had the most amazing Canberra experience,” says Emelia, whose job is to promote the national capital as a destination for business events.

“We rode our bikes everywhere and went for walks around Lake Burley Griffin. It was like we were tourists. We're very much hiking and camping kind of people.”

Despite having been together less then a year, Andrew, who also describes himself as a poet, has no qualms about putting his fledging relationship under the microscope of My Kitchen Rules.

“It's the best relationship I've ever been in by far,” he said. “There's no underlying feeling of, 'Is this person right for me?' I never thought it would happen for me but it's finally clear as crystal.”

Adds Emelia: “It was really awesome because I've never met anyone like Andrew before – he's just got such awesome energy. We're crazy and random.”

Having lived in the Middle East and Sri Lanka before her family settled in Canberra when Emelia was 12, the Australian-born cook's heritage has encouraged her love of entertaining.

“My family has a long history of having dinner parties and having friends around and I think I've taken that from my family's Sri Lankan background,” says Emelia. “I love to feed people.”

“We're natural entertainers,” offers Andrew.

“We've had some ripper parties.”

With a passion for spices, the couple pride themselves on being able to cook a diverse range of food.

“Andrew likes Cajun food and I love Moroccan and Sri Lankan food,” Emelia said. Adds Andrew: “We try to mix cultures together and blend it in our own way.”

Like his cooking, Andrew has broad tastes when it comes to music.

“I love everything from heavy space rock to Portuguese acid jazz,” says Andrew, who moved to Canberra with his family in his early teens.

A total of 12 teams will be vying for $250,000 in prize money when MKR returns.