Jenny Kelly and Mairead Ronan's new podcast is for 'women our age, having a laugh'

Jenny Kelly and Mairead Ronan wanted to make a programme for women just like them and their new podcast is a place where they can truly be themselves, writes Edel Coffey

Sat, 01 Apr, 2023 - 11:06

Edel Coffey

Jenny Kelly and Mairead Ronan — or Jenny and Mairead as they are better known — should really have their own hybrid name by now, something like Jenn-ead or Mair-enny, so fixed are they in our minds as a duo.

The pair first met on The Ray D’Arcy Show 20 years ago, when it was still broadcast on Today FM, and they became fast friends as well as on-air favourites with their relaxed, unscripted style. They describe their roles back then as “chipper-inners” but to listeners of the show at the time, it felt like much more than that. They were fixtures, part of the family, but life moves on.

Jenny married Ray D’Arcy and they have two children together. The Ray Darcy Show moved from Today FM to RTÉ. Mairead got married, and had a son with her first husband. After her divorce, she found love and remarried with businessman Louis Ronan, with whom she has two daughters. She has hosted Ireland’s Fittest Family for the last ten years, won Dancing With The Stars in 2019 and also presented her own lunchtime radio show on Today FM, before deciding during the pandemic to take a step back to be with her three children. She also made another big decision the day before we met for our interview last month, which is to resign as presenter of Ireland’s Fittest Family.

‘I have worked on Ireland’s Fittest Family and loved every single day of it from season one, when it was I always think a little show on RTÉ, a brand new format, and now it has grown to a pillar in the RTÉ schedule. And I’ve been there, right up to year ten. I’ve loved it, but I also love change and I love being the person who decides on the change. I look forward to watching it this year with my feet up with my family and not knowing who the winner is and I’m also really hopeful that I will be back on screens on something else, because I still want to work in telly. I love telly. But I love change more.’

Throughout all this change, Jenny and Mairead have remained close friends and have finally reunited with a new weekly podcast, Jenny and Mairead Now, an easy-going, wide-ranging and up-beat chat.

Conducting an interview with the pair is a bit like being a hapless teacher trying to keep control of two high-spirited pupils. There is constant joking and laughter and you have to keep up with their rapid banter. It feels like listening in on one of their podcasts. I wonder if they are enjoying having total control over their own show for the first time?

“A million per cent,” says Mairead. “We love radio, I still love radio, but we have this freedom to say what we want. The way radio has gone now, you don’t have the time to have these chats, because you’ve got a competition or the news or the ads or the Angelus!” They won’t be talking about listenership figures any time soon, but it’s testament to their popularity that their original loyal listeners from Today FM are subscribing to the podcast.

“We’re getting emails saying, ‘I grew up with you guys’,”… says Jenny. Mairead picks it up, “…and, ‘I remember listening to you on the morning of my wedding. I’ve three kids now but I divorced that guy’. It’s so funny.” Yes, they really do finish each other’s sentences.

CREATING A SPACE

They also had deeper reasons for making the podcast. Ronan is 42 and Kelly has just turned 50 and they wanted to make a programme for women like them. “We’re not hearing women our age,” Jenny says, “just having a bit of a laugh. Sometimes women of our age, in their 40s and 50s, we’re almost put into the ‘old’ heap.” She cites Sharon Horgan as a role model. “Sharon Horgan is a superstar for Irish women. She’s amazing and she’s so shit-cool. It’s like she gave two fingers to what you’re supposed to look like in your 40s and 50s.”

The idea for the podcast first came up a few years ago when Jenny suggested it on a beach in Dunmore East. “It was after Dancing with the Stars,” Ronan says, “and it was like she just asked me to climb Mount Everest, actually. I just felt like I couldn’t take another thing on.”

Ronan realised during the pandemic that she loved being at home with her children and made the decision to leave her lunchtime radio slot on Today FM. “I turned 40 in covid and I always thought I’d have another baby after Bonnie, but that just hasn’t happened. Then the pandemic came and that madness of I have to go to this gig, that event, it all just went away and I realised I loved being at home.”

The pair have the kind of easy chemistry that only comes with decades of friendship. When I ask them to describe each other, Mairead says Jenny is “very loyal, very funny, extremely kind and blunt-blunt-blunt honest”. Likewise, Jenny says Mairead is “one of the funniest people I know, but incredibly kind and thoughtful and just a gorgeous friend. I love her so much.” Jenny believes they are “karmically connected”, Mairead says: “I went into Today FM a year after my mum died so I was kind of mothered and minded in Today FM.”

“Maureen brought me to her,” Jenny says, referring to Mairead’s late mum.

Even though she was only 21 when her mum died, Mairead says she learned how to be a mother from her own mother. “My mother was so amazing. When she got really sick, I was a little bit lost at that time. All my friends knew exactly what they were doing, and I had dropped out of a course and my mum said, ‘What do you want to do Mairead?’ And I said I want to work in radio and she said, ‘Let’s look at courses to make that happen’.”

Mairead received the letter for her interview in Ballyfermot College on the day of her mother’s funeral. “That was totally meant to happen.” She also says she learned how not to be a parent from her mother. “She was an amazing mother, but she had a terrible temper and she always regretted her temper. Now, I do give out to the kids and there have been times I’ve shouted and regretted it, but my mam did it way too much and it definitely made me a little bit panicky and probably made me an over-explainer.” She also remembers an emphasis on being slim.

“For our mothers’ generation, the epitome of beauty was to be thin,” says Jenny, “and to keep your figure. They were all obsessed by it. I’m at a stage in my life where I’m like, do not comment on my body. Do not.”

Mairead Ronan and Jenny Kelly: passion for radio hasn't left them

PRESSURES ON WOMEN

Despite a change in attitudes, there are still pressures on how women look, particularly those who work in television. “I look after myself in all sorts of ways and that is for telly definitely,” says Mairead. “There’s no secret, I don’t hide what age I am: I’m 42, I’m a mother of three, but I actually feel really good and think I look good,” she says. “But nobody would ever ask Davey Fitz, ‘Do you think you need to get in shape for Ireland’s Fittest Family?” Ronan is funnier and more relaxed in person and on the podcast than she has appeared in previous roles. Does she feel like she can be herself for the first time?

“I’ve never had the opportunity to be myself,” she says. “On my show on Today FM I had snippets of opportunity to be funny, but then it was the pandemic and nothing was funny. We do have this lovely freedom to be ourselves and do what we’re doing now which is just to record a conversation and it’s not overly produced. It feels nice and easy.” For now they are both enjoying striking a balance between work and home life. I ask them what their wildest ambitions were when they first started out working in radio. They smile.

“Having my own radio show…,” says Mairead. “…And mine was to be a producer of a daily radio show,” says Jenny.

Considering they’ve achieved those dreams, what’s next?

They struggle for a minute before Mairead concedes a return to live radio might be something she would consider.

“That’s our first love,” Jenny agrees.

You get the impression that if it does happen, this time it will be on their terms