Mary Wilson has spoken for the first time about her heartache following the break-up of her marriage to RTÉ Soccer Correspondent Tony O’Donoghue in 2005.
In a frank interview with the RTÉ Guide, the ‘Drivetime’ presenter speaks about how the split came just as she took over the RTÉ Radio One programme and how it followed the loss of her mother the year previously.
Wilson began working with RTÉ as a news reporter in 1989 and married her fellow RTÉ colleague, Tony O’Donoghue, in 1994. In 2006 she began presenting ‘Drivetime’, just a year after separating from O’Donoghue.
“My marriage had just broken up when all this happened, so there was a lot going on,” she told the RTÉ Guide of the period.
“Life happens, it’s tough, it’s horrible, and it’s awful. But you pick yourself up, you dust yourself down, and you’ve two choices, I’ve learned that.
“You can sit down and throw your hands in the air and give up, or you can get up and say, ‘Okay, I still have a life to live’. I can’t undo this, there’s nothing I can do to change what’s happened, I can only move on and continue to live my life. You don’t go into marriage ever thinking it’s not going to work, you don’t weigh up the what ifs.”
Wilson also spoke of her daughter Aoife, whom she described as her “priority” in life: “She’s a lovely, happy kid, she’s my priority. Marriage break-up is awful, but we’re the grown ups, she’s the child, she didn’t ask for this. So you have to – and it’s hard – try and move beyond your own feelings and your own selfishness. We’ve got to make it as good as we can for her sake.”
The full interview with Mary Wilson can be found in the current issue of the RTÉ Guide, which features The Afternoon Show presenter Sheana Keane on the cover.
