New husband, new job, new home: just as well Anna has fitness factor
IT’S been a heady few months for Ireland’s Fittest Family star Anna Geary. She got a new job — as a presenter on Today FM, which she will do in addition to her work as a coach for the new GAA season. She got a new house — in Sallins, Co Kildare, and last week she got a new husband, Dublin man Kevin Sexton. The ceremony was at the Castlemartyr resort in Cork and Anna wore a handmade Tamem Michael dress.
“I’ve never been as happy as I was on the day,” she says. “Often with weddings there can be a lot of pressure, but for us it was all about how you felt in the moment. There’s so much stuff put on social media and we wanted to take it away from that and enjoy what was happening in real time.”
Not that she is averse to some social media — last week she posted a picture of her incredible washboard stomach, prompting admiration from Deirdre O’Kane, Mairead Ronan and other stars.
“Look I’m not going to pretend that the stomach just happens,” Anna laughs. “It does take a bit of work. Obviously everyone wants to look great for their wedding day but I wasn’t training specifically for it. Exercise is a huge part of my physical and mental well being. I’d be lying if I said I always had confidence about my body.
“Sport allowed me to look at my mindset in terms of what I can do, not just in terms of how I look. My body looked different from other girls growing up because I was sprinting and training in the gym.”
Anna is a legend of Cork camogie. She captained the county team to an All Ireland win in 2014 and won four All Star awards. Her personable manner and ease on camera made a media career an obvious choice.
The appearance of everything coming easily to her is deceptive, however, she says. “I don’t know would I recommend to people to do all those things — wedding, job, home, in one go. It was a lot of stress, but it was good stress. I could hardly absorb that I’d achieved an ambition of having a national radio show. Of course, I’ve had a bit of imposter syndrome. But I’ve had a lot of support there as well. My entire life has been about teamwork so I know how to do that.”
She says she is happy to take Kevin’s name but will use her own name for work.
“We were checking into a hotel and they called me Anna Sexton and that was lovely but I’m known from camogie as Anna Geary.”
They were taking a “mini moon” at Lough Eske in Donegal: “We’re like every young couple — we just bought a house and got married — I don’t know where we’d be getting the money for a big trip. But we’ll do that next year.”
Ireland’s Fittest Family’ returns to RTE One next Sunday, 6.30pm