![\"Front](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5110686_5_articleinlinemobile_Front_left_to_right_are_John_Deirdre_and_Tony_and_back_left_to_right_a.jpeg\" "\\"Front")
Front row, John, Deirdre, and Tony, and back row, mother Pauline, Mary Kennedy and father Tom.\u00a0<\/p>\nMary Kennedy has three siblings yet considers herself one of seven. That\u2019s because the TV presenter grew up in a house in Clondalkin that was right next door to her mother\u2019s sister\u2019s family.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were four of us, me \u2014 the eldest \u2014 John, Deirdre and Tony; and three of them, William, Brian and Barry,\u201d she says. \u201cThere was a stile in the back garden and we were constantly in and out of each other\u2019s houses. It felt like we were all one family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such was the closeness between the two families they even went on holidays together.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had no money but we had fabulous times,\u201d says Kennedy. \u201cEvery January, Mammy and her sister Eil\u00eds would start looking at the listings for summer houses in the paper. They had two criteria. The house had to be big enough for the lot of us and it had to be cheap.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their low budget meant they sometimes stayed in houses of questionable quality.<\/p>\n
She recalls one in Belmullet where \u201ca stream ran through the kitchen at high tide that us kids loved jumping over\u201d.<\/p>\n
Kennedy was a shy child. She says she \u201cwouldn\u2019t ask for things in shops or take risks as my siblings did after me. I remember waiting at a bus stop with two pals one day and trying a cigarette. I was so worried that either my Mam would find out or I\u2019d go to hell that I never smoked again.\u201d<\/p>\n
To help her overcome her shyness, her mother Pauline signed her up for elocution classes, and her father Tom bought her public speaking books.<\/p>\n
Home life was built around predictable routines. The family would sit down to tea at 6pm every evening and say the rosary together afterwards.<\/p>\n
Front row, John, Deirdre, and Tony, and back row, mother Pauline, Mary Kennedy and father Tom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her parents were busy. \u201cMammy would be in and out to her sister next door, to ICA meetings or cleaning the church or practising with the choir. Daddy worked in insurance and was a member of the Clondalkin Drama Group and involved with St Vincent de Paul and the credit union. He loved going to the races and they both loved ballroom dancing, which they did every Thursday. They were great dancers. It\u2019s only since doing Dancing with the Stars that I appreciate how good they were.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy, her siblings and her cousins would play on the street before supper, joining friends for games of tennis and rounders, making daisy chains and playing hopscotch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n And if it ever snowed or froze, we\u2019d be out with jugs of water to make a slide on the road, much to the annoyance of some of the neighbours.\n <\/p>\n
Her mother was the disciplinarian of the family, and she laughs as she describes her father as \u201clike putty \u2014 there was no such thing as \u2018wait until your father gets home\u2019 in our house. We\u2019d have been thrilled to have been told that.\u201d<\/p>\n
At school, Kennedy says she was \u201ca bit of a nerd\u201d. She got a poor report from one of her teachers in first year at secondary school and felt so guilty about it she says she \u201cknuckled down and didn\u2019t take my head out of the books until the Leaving Cert. There would be times when Daddy and the others were making noise downstairs, and I\u2019d be upstairs banging a shoe on the floor to shut them up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her hard work paid off when she won a scholarship to study arts at University College Dublin, where she continued to immerse herself in her studies.<\/p>\n
![\"Mary](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5110689_5_articleinlinemobile_Mary_Kennedy_as_a_baby_with_her_mother_Pauline.jpg\" "\\"Mary")
Mary Kennedy as a baby with her mother Pauline.<\/p>\n
\u201cI regret that a little now,\u201d she says. \u201cI spent so much time in lectures and in the library. If I could write a letter to my teenage self, I\u2019d tell her that studying isn\u2019t the be-all-and-end-all.\u201d<\/p>\n
She got a job at the University of Rennes in France after graduating. She was 21. It was her first time living away from home, and she recalls looking forward to it as \u201ca chance to have an adventure\u201d.<\/p>\n
She was terribly homesick at first. So homesick her mother told her she didn\u2019t have to stay. \u201cBut Daddy told me that the homesickness would pass and he was right,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\n I\u2019m so glad I didn\u2019t miss out on the experience of sharing an apartment, shopping for food in markets and hosting dinner parties with friends. Our apartment might have had mice in it but living in France was like Hollywood for me.\n <\/p>\n
She had intended to spend two years abroad but her father\u2019s sudden death from a heart attack at 59 meant she returned home after one. She tells of how her father used to write her letters when she lived in France.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went home for the funeral and when I came back to finish off the term, there was a letter from him waiting for me. I was so sad to get it, but now it\u2019s one of my most treasured possessions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Growing up, Kennedy never imagined she would work on TV because \u201cpeople on TV had posh accents back then. Nobody sounded like they were from Clondalkin\u201d.<\/p>\n
But her attitude changed following Dana\u2019s Eurovision win. Kennedy remembers thinking that \u201cif an ordinary girl from Derry could do it, maybe I could too. I just had to think of a way that didn\u2019t involve singing.\u201d<\/p>\n
She got her chance when she saw an ad for part-time continuity announcers on RT\u00c9. She passed an audition and first appeared on TV at 5pm on October 4, 1978.<\/p>\n
If she ever experiences nerves, as she did before co-presenting the Eurovision Song Contest in 1995, Kennedy thinks of her father.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll those public speaking books he bought when I was a shy child make me wonder if he recognised something in me,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat would he think if he could see me now?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary Kennedy is back with the fourth season of Moving West, which airs on TG4 on Tuesdays at 7.30pm<\/p>\n
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