Copyright evoke
There are plenty of couples in Irish media who work together, and Miriam O'Callaghan is adamant that it's not difficult to work in the same organisation as her husband, Steve Carson. Miriam and Steve met in 1995 when working for BBC Newsnight, and while she's a high-flying career presenting Primetime and her RTÉ radio show on Sundays, he's now the director of video at RTÉ. Speaking with You Magazine, Miriam was insistent that her career belongs to her and her alone - say it louder for the people at the back, Miriam! ‘I started working with Steve in 1995, I’ve only ever known myself working with him for 30 years,’ she says. ‘He’s got nothing to do with current affairs or radio. He’s not in charge of news and he’s not in charge of radio, so he’s no say in my career. As I always say, I had my glittering career long before he became a senior boss. That’s my ultra-feminism coming out but it’s true.' In fact, Miriam also had every right to be furious when commentators questioned her impartiality as a journalist when her brother Jim, now Minister for Justice, became part of the Government. ‘I’m not a militant feminist, I am an ardent feminist, so there are red-line issues,’ she says. ‘I have my own glorious career and – I don’t care what man it is – no man is going to steal my career away because of their choices. Those days are over. The patriarchy is dead. Amen!’ Speaking further about her husband, with whom she shares four sons, Miriam admitted she didn't like Steve at first, but during a car journey, she confided how worried she was about her late sister Anne’s two young daughters, and Steve told her he’d lost his own mother aged four. ‘I looked at him and thought, you seem normal, you’ve done ok, they are going to be fine,’ she recalls. Of course, the girls are more than fine. ‘They are fantastic,’ Miriam says. ‘Lizzie, the youngest, got married recently and we all went to the wedding.’ She cried because Anne wasn’t there to see it but only briefly as the couple were marrying outside and though it had been raining, the sun came out when it was needed. ‘I just said, “There’s Anne and my dad.” I believe those things,’ Miriam says. ‘People probably think, oh, that’s a bit mad and obviously I don’t believe you go up and sit in heaven and drink Champagne, but I do think the love of those people who adored you lingers and makes good things happen. ‘I am convinced that my father and Steve’s mum, coincidentally, met up in heaven to bring me Steve, because that liaison was so unlikely to work. So yeah, I believe in it.’ There’s a funny part in Miriam's new book when she writes about being in Holles Street, with her young twins, Jessica and Georgia, by her side and she sees Pat Kenny presenting her RTÉ show, something that spurs her back into action and back into work even with such small children. ‘I’m unapologetically, incredibly ambitious and incredibly competitive,’ Miriam says. ‘I still am. They laugh at me in work because I always want to know the figures. I got that from Eamonn Andrews,’ she says of the legendary Irish broadcaster who was her first boss when she was a researcher on This Is Your Life. Women are often castigated by others for being ambitious, but Miriam has no truck with this either. ‘Just ignore them,’ she says. ‘You can be competitive and ambitious and be kind to everyone along the way.’ Everyone knows, the world of television and radio can be a fickle business. Miriam, however, isn’t worried. She never plans anything, just takes opportunities as they come. ‘I literally wake up every day delighting in what I do, and if tomorrow there was a tsunami and every bit of broadcasting was wiped away, I’d improvise and I would do something else. I’m still a lawyer,’ she says, laughing about the fact that her mother would be delighted if she went back to a steady job.
