Aoibhín: I’ve got my sights set on higher things...
Dance show star to to join husband at Everest… but she won’t be climbing!
ACTRESS Aoibhín Garrihy will be swapping her dance shoes for hiking boots when Dancing With The Stars comes to an end.
The former Fair City actress, who is hoping she reaches the final of the hit show in the coming weeks, is gearing up to accompany husband John Burke as far as base camp of Mount Everest ahead of his attempt to scale the world’s highest mountain.
Speaking to the Irish Mail on Sunday, she said: ‘Taking part in the show has been such a wonderful experience, but I’ve had to make small sacrifices like not being home very often in recent weeks.
‘My husband John is training for Everest and he is planning to head out a week after I finish. He’ll be gone for two-and-a-half months.
‘I hate the idea of saying goodbye at the airport’
‘He’s been talking about doing this for the past seven or eight years, so it’s strange that I haven’t been there to help him more.
‘He’s been an amazing support to me but we just haven’t been around each other that much.
‘We’re only married six months and we have never seen as little as each other since we got married. But I’m going to trek to base camp with John: I hate the idea of saying goodbye to him at the airport.’
The 28-year-old revealed that she accompanied him to Nepal in the early days of their relationship. ‘I was hit by altitude sickness and I didn’t shower for two weeks as there isn’t the facilities,’ she recalled.
‘That was a real test of the relationship! But we survived to tell the tale.’ Businessman John, who has spent nearly a decade preparing for his attempt on Everest, is raising funds for Youth Wellness in his native Co. Clare. ‘He’ll be the first Banner man to reach the top of Everest,’ she said.
Meanwhile, as competition in Dancing With The Stars hots up, Aoibhín says that one of the show’s biggest fans is within her own family: her 92-year-old grandfather.
‘It really seems to span the generations,’ she said. ‘I had my granddad up at one of the live shows and he loved it.’ Tonight Aoibhín and her professional dance partner Vitali Kozmin will be back on stage dancing the tango to Objection by Shakira.