Gray Cahill captured the hearts and minds of people across the country when she appeared in an RTÉ One documentary about planning for her death, but on the day of filming for Agony OAPs, it was the 82-year-old's dog, Mollie, who stole the limelight.
"The first time she was very happy to be on the lead and when I went in to be recorded she was up on the chair with me", Gray tells RTÉ LifeStyle. "The second time I was being interviewed she was happy enough to sit on the floor beside me. The next day we came in she said 'oh, come on, I've got the run of this place!'
"She was in and out of rooms and she soon figured out where people were eating and there were crumbs on the floor".
Gray was well preoccupied with her gang of Agony OAPs, Pat Spillane, Mary O'Rourke, Matt Dodd, Frank Twomey and Sharon Higgins.
Scouted through her appearance on RTÉ's Documentary on One, which charted her researching how she wanted things done when she shuffled off the mortal coil.
Individualism is right through Gray, who - born in 1938 in Providence, Rhode Island as Mary Gray Cahill - changed her name shortly after she got to Ireland in 1977, since there were already so many Mary's around.
A former nun with the Sisters of Mercy, Cahill stayed in the order for 13 years, before leaving after the changes from Vatican II.
"The atmosphere in the Church and the world, really, was changed radically with Vatican II. The rejuvenation that Pope John XXIII had was embraced happily and enthusiastically by some and not so by others.
"There were both sides in the order that I was in, and those of us who wanted more radical change really had it put to us, well, 'on your bikes!'"
Gray was among those who wanted "more interaction with people, more reaching out to address problems of poverty and helping issues", which were in the ethos of her order, but due to possible "constraints", couldn't always be prioritised.
The agony aunt turned to those who had left before, as well as her family, for support but her decision was largely self-driven, with a clarity and drive that is abundantly clear in even the briefest of conversations with Gray.
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She recalls being told by one "disapproving" nun, "You are the most independent freshman I have ever met". For the record, she didn't think it could be too bad a thing to be!
While many of the questions sent in touched on the same challenges faced by young people in any place, at any time, many, she said, "were specific to this age" and telling about where young people are today.
"One lad wrote in, he was in his early 20s ... and because of the housing market being what it is, he was still at home with his mother", Gray said. "She treats him like he's 12 years old. It's specific to the age, if not the country", she adds.
One query came in from a young man whose friends were sharing hardcore porn with each other, while another addressed a young girl's serious eco-anxiety.
"Those kinds of issues wouldn't have arisen. Their generation have different issues certainly than I had when I was their age."
What did 20-something Gray grapple with? "Actually, I can't remember", she says and can you have any better complaint at 82? "Nothing earth-shattering comes to mind."
"My mother used to tell her brothers, 'You don't know you're living!' [There were] six of us hanging out of her when my father died and she had plenty on her plate, so that's what she would say to her brothers when they would come in to visit - they lived right next door. 'You don't know you're living!'"
"I sometimes feel like that when I see some problems some people have. I say, god, my mother would be saying the same thing to me'"
Her current challenge? Deciding how her affairs will be managed when she passes on. She tells us that "both here and in the States there's a tendency to put the dying experience off-stage", which she firmly flipped on its head.
"I've got a few more ideas in my head about what ought to happens next. We'll see."
As for whether she's still religious, she says "religious as to a particular brand of religion, no," though she has seen changes in many faiths in recent years. "Even established religions are getting to be more cognisant of the fact that people are going to find their way through life in different ways."
Instead, she describes herself as "a wondering human being approaching wonder with wonder". Where does a wondering human turn to for advice?
"I would talk with friends", she says. "But I suppose it's also a matter of searching out within oneself."
