My Childhood with Karen Koster: I didn’t know how good I had it until I left home
Television presenter Karen Koster reflects on childhood memories. Pictures: Brian McEvoy
Karen Koster didn’t move out of home until she was 29. The television presenter wonders if she may have been reluctant to leave her mother.
“She and I were close and she gave me the run of the house,” says Koster. “I didn’t know how good I had it until I left. She did the grocery shopping and my laundry. No wonder I milked it for as long as I could.”
Koster grew up in Killiney, Co Dublin, as the youngest of three children. “And by youngest, I mean youngest,” she says. “My brother, Greg, is 13 years older than me and my sister, Zoe, is 10 years older. Mum had them in her 20s and when she was in her 30s and they didn’t need her as much anymore, she fancied having another. So after a 10-year-break from changing nappies, they had me. Everyone, including my siblings, saw me as the baby.”
Koster’s mother, Brenda, was a homemaker, and her father, Herman, ran a chain of hair salons. Because he was busy at work and her siblings were at school, Koster and her mum spent a lot of time together and she remembers day trips to places like Arnott’s and the ILAC Centre in Dublin City.
A day she’ll never forget was when her mother averted a disaster involving a Superser gas heater. “We had that heater in the kitchen and I put my blankie on it one day to warm it up. Before I knew it, the blankie was on fire and I was distraught. But Mum saved the day by putting out the fire and immediately getting to work on making me a new blankie.”
Koster describes her childhood self as “a girlie girl”. She loved watching her mother put on makeup and enjoyed nothing more than helping her sister dress up to go out on a Saturday night.
“In the meantime, I played with Barbies. Years later, Mum found all my Barbies and their accessories in the attic and gave them to my daughter, Eve. But she wasn’t as careful with them as I was. She cut up their clothes and wrote on their faces.”
Koster always regarded home as “a happy place”. Her mother had one sibling, who lived in South Africa, and because her father was from the Netherlands, all his family were a plane ride away. “With no close family nearby, we were a tight-knit unit of five,” she says.
Going to school gave Koster the opportunity to interact with children her own age. She met a girl in junior infants who was also the youngest in her family and says they “formed a gang very quickly, remaining friends to this day”.
Throughout her school years, she preferred speech and drama and debating to sports.
“I think I was a bit of a nerd, in that I liked to reach my potential and do well,” she says. “That didn’t come from my parents. They never put pressure on me. It all came from myself.”
Her teenage years at St Joseph of Cluny in Killiney were carefree. When asked to identify a problem or challenge, all she can think of is that “it was an all-girls’ Catholic school. That made it hard to meet boys and not be like a deer in the headlights if ever you got a chance to talk to one.”
When the time came to choose a college course, she had no real career plan and opted to study her favourite school subjects: English and French. She went to Trinity College, but found the transition to university challenging.
“I’d been a big fish in a small pond, but at Trinity, I was suddenly in a hugely competitive pond and that came as a shock to the system.”
However, it was at Trinity that Koster started to consider a career in television. A friend suggested she audition for a role on a TG4 show and “even though I didn’t have much Irish, I did”, she says. “I didn’t get the role, but I caught the TV bug. I was 20 years old and, from then on, I knew I wanted to be on the telly.”
Koster was equally sure of herself when she married businessman John McGuire Jr in 2013. “We met when I was 27 and when we got married, we knew we wanted to have kids quickly and close together in age,” she says.
“Our eldest, Finn, is 11, JJ is 10, and Eve is eight and they are a readymade gang.
“I’m a little jealous of the camaraderie they have as they all go through life together. I didn’t have that with my brother or sister, even though we have a great relationship now.”
Her childhood was overwhelmingly happy and she is grateful to have come from such a loving family.
“We lost Mum suddenly four years ago, and it’s still hard to accept that loss,” she says. “We’ve still got Dad, and he’s great. And I’m trying to carry on the traditions Mum had with us. She enjoyed life and appreciated the good times and always made a big deal of birthdays, decorating the kitchen table with balloons, cards, and presents.
“When we did our pre-marriage course, John said that was one thing he really liked about my family, so it’s something we do with our own kids now.
“But it keeps escalating every year, with the likes of confetti cannons and helium balloons. Maybe we need to rein it back to Mum levels.”
This summer, Karen Koster has teamed up with MiWadi to launch this year’s MiWadi FAI children’s football camps, which take place throughout July and August at football clubs nationwide. Find out more at www.bookings.faifootballcamps.ie.
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