Cover Story Nuala Carey The popular broadcaster has personal reasons for being the face of this year’s Daffodil Day campaign. Donal O’Donoghue meets her to find out more
The weather and the Lotto have made Nuala Carey a household face and a star of the National Ploughing Championships. But the recent death of her father has prompted her to look at life anew. Donal O’Donoghue meets her
I was never a sad singleton but people may have misinterpreted that
Some weeks after her father died, Nuala Carey met him in a dream. In that otherworldly encounter Maurice was dressed in his Sunday best, happy, healthy, himself. For his daughter the dream was both a blessing and a balm. “I do still worry about him,” says the RTÉ broadcaster, four months since her father’s death, the initial hurricane of emotions replaced by the tug and toil of the everyday. Grief still falls but the ever practical Carey, who in the past has supported a number of charities and causes, is giving back as an ambassador for the Irish Cancer Society’s Daffodil Day (Maurice Carey had pancreatic cancer). So on March 22, Nuala and her mother, Ann, will be selling daffodils and pins in their local shop in Dún Laoghaire, her story evocative of many others. “The hardest times are the evenings when I’m alone in the house,” she says now. “Like seeing the chair Dad would have sat in and recalling the sounds of him waking up with Morning Ireland on the radio and the creak of the hot press being opened. Small things like that bring him back. The days are quieter now but you get to fill them with different things. We did get some of our wishes for Dad before he died. He got into the hospice in Blackrock for the final 48 hours and I was with him when he passed that morning. I held his hand, not wanting to leave the room, fearing he might slip away if I did. And when it happened, it was so quiet and tranquil that we weren’t even sure that he was gone.” We meet in RTÉ, Nuala Carey descending the sweeping staircase from the newsroom, the location where, as a transition year student, she decided that RTÉ wouldn’t be a bad place to work. Dressed in a striking red dress and looking not unlike Reese Witherspoon, a celebrity she has been compared to more than once, Carey is a confusion of emotions but also optimistic about what can be done by contributing to Daffodil Day (“Research is the key”). Memories of her father are still raw, her eyes welling up at times as she talks about “taking it one day at a time.” Yet it’s not all sadness, as she recalls how she once played the dead wife of Mel Gibson in Braveheart, rode pillion on a motorbike the length of Norway for charity and was never, contrary to some, a sad single person. Indeed, she is happy with her lot and considers herself charmed in her career.
As an RTÉ weather presenter and caller of the Lotto numbers, Carey is a household face. People still ask her to kiss their lottery tickets or rub her hand for luck, while strangers shout to her about meteorological matters on the street. There are other strings to her bow: she has been a guest presenter on Today with Maura and Dáithí as well as Winning Streak, was a coach on Celebrity Bainisteoir (Shannonbridge GFC were her charges), belted out Britney on Charity You’re a Star and saw stars on The Restaurant. If she has yet to step out on Dancing with the Stars, it’s because she reckons she’s might be too obvious a choice. But more than anything, Nuala Carey is the sweetheart of the National Ploughing Championships, mobbed by well-wishers and the occasional love-smitten farmer. “You’re like Beyoncé for those three days and then you come back to earth when you get back to Dublin,” she says. Nuala Carey grew up in the Dublin suburb of Monkstown, the middle of three girls (between Lynda and Brenda). Her parents were country folk, from counties Cork (Maurice) and Mayo (Ann), who put their daughters above all else. Nuala, who had a talent for mimicry (“At school I could do all the teachers but not in a mean way”) and was doing readings at Mass by the age of nine. She had dreams of becoming an actor and at 16, she bagged a part in a local production of Big Maggie. Yet when she was offered a place on the drama course at Trinity, she turned it down for a BA in English and sociology at UCD. It was the safe option but she has no regrets. “Things worked out the way they were meant to,” she says. “I did my transition year work experience in RTÉ and still remember walking down the winding stairs at the end of that week thinking I’d love to come back.”
If I were to meet Dad again I’d just tell him that I really miss him
Following graduation, Carey followed the civil service path of her parents, working as a clerical officer with the CSO and then the Revenue Commissioners. She volunteered at night with the Dublin community radio station, Anna Livia, where she did the news, weather and traffic, a stepping stone to AA Roadwatch and then RTÉ in 1999. “A lot of it was just pure luck and timing,” she says. “Through Anna Livia, I got a job with AA Roadwatch and a year later, RTÉ advertised for weather people with some experience.” When she joined RTÉ, there was a bit of a kerfuffle about the national broadcaster deciding to replace meteorologists with presenters, before people power prompted a compromise. “The solution was a team made up of half and half, which in a way allowed me to be more flexible,” says Carey. “I was available to do the Lotto when it came up a few years later.”
It’s nearly a decade since Nuala Carey was a guest on Derek Mooney’s RTÉ Radio One show ‘Searching for Mister Right’, talking about life as a singleton, a subject she subsequently spoke about as a panellist on the The Late Late Show. “I don’t regret it,” she says now. “I was never a sad singleton but people may have misinterpreted that. For me, it was all a bit of fun and me just talking about being single and the etiquette of first dates and all that. It was all very innocent and it was never Nuala is looking for a man. That disappointed me because that wasn’t what it was about.” Whether she is single or in a relationship right now is something she won’t talk about, adding that in any case it wouldn’t be appropriate in the light of her recent loss. Nuala said once that people have certain misconceptions about her, like she hasn’t a fun side. “The weather is a serious subject to many people,” she says. But do people think she is too serious or a bit of fun? “I’m probably somewhere in between,” she offers. “I’m certainly not mad.” So what was the maddest thing she ever did? “Probably travelling the length of Norway as a pillion passenger on a motorbike for a charity event,” she says. “Now the fellow who was riding the bike was a great driver and it didn’t knock a feather out of me. Of course, other people might think the maddest thing I ever did was singing on Charity You’re A Star but I found it to be the best fun ever, even if I wasn’t hitting all the right notes.” Some things have shifted after her father’s death. “I look at life through a different lens now,” she says. “People told me how after a parent died, they were never the same. That frightened me as I didn’t want to change, or at least I didn’t see how I could change. Now I know what they mean. Not only do I look at things differently, but I appreciate the details more. I remember how some years ago I was at a wedding down the country and had to work the following day. My Dad said that he would drive home with me that night. That was probably the last time we were both in such a close space, just the two of us, without any distraction. Now those moments are worth their weight in gold.”
So life is for living, with plans to travel more, maybe to the US, where she hasn’t been since 2001, and more hikes in the hills of Wicklow. She loves nature, keeps fit by running, listens to everything from The Carpenters to Taylor Swift and lists her most recent cinema film as Mary Poppins Returns (“disappointing”). She loves being busy and says that if she ever won big (she’s not allowed to play the Irish Lottery) she would probably ‘splurge’ on a car (“Value for money” says the former civil servant). “I think I always knew what mattered in life,” she says. “I never was materialistic, never had any interest in possessions. I’d get a much bigger kick out of meeting a friend for coffee than owning a designer handbag. And that came from my parents, very down-to-earth people.” Afterwards, tape switched off, we talked again about grief and coping, about looking after the living and remembering the dead. Carey is anxious that maybe she talked too much about the negative aspects; after all, everyone dies and life goes on. She’s curious about how other people live with grief, now that it’s part of her life, and she has become accustomed to good days and bad. “Today is an alright day,” she says, before adding that could change by nightfall. “I think about Dad all the time, there’s not a minute that I don’t. I remember that whenever he rang me he always used the same sequence of words at the start of his chat. If I were to meet him again I’d probably just tell him that I really miss him.”
Daffodil Day is on March 22. For more information on the Irish Cancer Society or to donate, visit cancer.ie
You’re like Beyoncé for those three days!