![\"Gr\u00e1inne](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/38875350-a50f-4de1-98e8-898a6b933617.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSe\u00e1n B\u00e1n Breathnach, the host of the Irish-language SBB ina Shu\u00ed, described her as a \u201cnatural\u201d, saying \u201cwe were a match made in heaven\u201d.<\/p>\n
Gr\u00e1inne N\u00ed Eifearn\u00e1in was one of a family of four, reared in an Irish-language speaking household in Drumcondra, Dublin.<\/p>\n
After attending Maryfield College, she studied at the College of Marketing and Design.<\/p>\n
She met her future husband, teacher and historian S\u00e9amas \u00d3 Maiti\u00fa, on hill walks with an Irish language club based in Wicklow.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 1973, she went to New York with her friend, Una O\u2019Keeffe, and they found work in a restaurant near Central Park. The two young women were planning a tour of the country before returning home and were offered the same by a very drunk customer one night.<\/p>\n
They said they might consider it if he returned \u201csober and with flowers\u201d, which he did. By then, their colleagues had informed them he was singer- songwriter Harry Nilsson.<\/p>\n
Her television career started by accident when \u00d3 Maiti\u00fa was invited on SBB ina Shu\u00ed, but asked her to go instead<\/p>\n
The pair took off with him in a hired car and \u00d3 Maiti\u00fa got a call from her one evening from the presidential suite in Washington\u2019s Watergate Hotel. With Nilsson, the women visited John Denver\u2019s home in Colorado and flew over the Grand Canyon in a plane. When they got to Las Vegas, Nilsson rang Elvis Presley. He was away, so they stayed in Liza Minelli\u2019s apartment.<\/p>\n
When U\u00ed Mhaiti\u00fa returned home, she left one of her travel bags with O\u2019Keeffe in the US. O\u2019Keeffe took it with her to London when she and Nilsson stayed at Ringo Starr\u2019s apartment. The next morning, the Beatles drummer spotted the bag, was alarmed at the Irish name and address on the name tag, and called the police.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Gr\u00e1inne U\u00ed Mhaiti\u00fa feeding piglets on her Co Wicklow farm in May, 1993. Photo: RT\u00c9<\/p>\n
After graduation, U\u00ed Mhaiti\u00fa used her artistic talents, designing book and album covers. She also helped \u00d3 Maiti\u00fa produce Mahogany Gaspipe, an Irish-language magazine for teenagers that he launched in 1980.<\/p>\n
Her television career started by accident when \u00d3 Maiti\u00fa was invited on SBB ina Shu\u00ed, but asked U\u00ed Mhaiti\u00fa to go instead.<\/p>\n
Producer Brian Eustace spotted her talent and offered her an opportunity to present the programme with Breathnach, who would go on to introduce her as \u201cGr\u00e1inne Gleoite\u201d.<\/p>\n
We never fluffed our lines, we enjoyed it, and Gr\u00e1inne had no ego<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we were upgraded to a 6.30pm slot, we hit an audience of 600,000 and Liam \u00d3 Murch\u00fa, then editor of Irish-language programmes, came in with a big box of chocolates,\u201d Breathnach said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never fluffed our lines, we enjoyed it, and Gr\u00e1inne had no ego.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome senior management decided to watch us one night and asked where our autocue was. Gr\u00e1inne had to explain to them the autocue was in our heads.\u201d<\/p>\n
He remembers how worried she was about him when they had a stunt team on the programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to lie between a bed of nails and a plank, and stuntman Paschal Whelan drove over me on a motorbike,\u201d he said. \u201cGr\u00e1inne said she couldn\u2019t bear to watch it.\u201d<\/p>\n
When U\u00ed Mhaiti\u00fa moved to Bosco, she starred alongside the five-year-old pint-sized puppet as one of a roster of presenters.<\/p>\n
U\u00ed Mhaiti\u00fa made headlines for reasons apart from her television career when a waitress asked her to stop breastfeeding her baby daughter, Aoife, in the RT\u00c9 canteen. This prompted letters of support to her from women all over the country.<\/p>\n
She was said to love nothing more than curling up with a good book by the stove<\/p>\n
In 1985, she and \u00d3 Maiti\u00fa bought a derelict cottage with 20 acres near Valleymount in Co Wicklow. As Aoife recalled at her mother\u2019s funeral, the \u201cpair of hippies from Rathmines and Drumcondra\u201d had a four-year-old and a newborn at the time.<\/p>\n
They lived initially in a mobile home, acquiring pigs, goats, ducks, geese, a pony, a donkey, two beehives, and a Jersey cow from the Bewley family herd. They opened an educational farm, and U\u00ed Mhaiti\u00fa made butter, jam and bread for visiting schoolchildren.<\/p>\n
An B\u00f3ithr\u00edn Cam, as it was called, featured on the RT\u00c9 Irish-language current affairs television programme C\u00farsa\u00ed in May 1993.<\/p>\n
Her home became a \u201ccolourful work of art\u201d, in her daughter\u2019s words, and she took up and taught basket-making \u2014 a skill that was in her family. One of her baskets was encased in bronze for the famine memorial created by sculptor \u00c9amonn O\u2019Doherty in Westchester, New York.<\/p>\n
Remembered for her independence, creativity, sense of humour, and gr\u00e1 for adventure, she was said to love nothing more than curling up with a good book by the stove.<\/p>\n
Gr\u00e1inne U\u00ed Mhaiti\u00fa is survived by her husband S\u00e9amas, son Connla, daughter Aoife, sisters Br\u00edd and Aislinn, brother Cill\u00edn, son-in-law Jarlath, and grand-daughters Bl\u00e1ith\u00edn and Sadhbh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Se\u00e1n B\u00e1n Breathnach, the host of the Irish-language SBB ina Shu\u00ed, described her as a \u201cnatural\u201d, saying \u201cwe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,6085],"class_list":["post-441532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-rte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}