Apart from this one, Georgina Ahern doesn't give interviews and largely keeps her distance from the celebrity world inhabited by her husband, Westlife's Nicky Byrne. This is just one of the things, says Liadan Hynes, that may explain why Nicky and Georgina are regarded as one of the happiest couples in showbiz. Of course, having Bertie Ahern around to play with worms and spiders with the kids probably helps, too.
By Liadan Hynes
'I remember seeing him when we started school and going 'Oh! There is this really good-looking, hot, blond guy, but he'll never look at me.' You know, quiet little girl."
Georgina Ahern is recalling the first time she spotted her husband, Nicky Byrne, or Nicko as she refers to him, the blond heart-throb of the Westlife line-up. They were 12 and starting secondary school in Baldoyle.
As it happens, the feeling was mutual. "From the beginning," she says, "he remembers seeing me as well. Like, staring across the classrooms." Business class, Nicky adds later, when he turns up at our shoot.
"It's funny; when he first asked me, he asked through someone who lived in the area. I was walking home on my own, on the way to the bus or something, and this guy said, 'Oh, you know, Nicko Byrne wants to, you know, will you...'" She trails off, smiling softly at the memory of 15-year-old inarticulacy.
"I was like, 'Oh, no,''' she shakes her head in refusal, "thinking I was just being taken the piss out of, because I thought he was like, wow!" she gasps in awed tones, laughing.
Luckily, despite the initial rebuff, Nicky tried again a few months later.
"He asked again through a mutual friend, who I used to sit beside in school. I knew she wasn't joking. So I was, like, 'Yeah, OK, definitely,' and they organised that we meet in one of his friends' houses. It's all just very sweet and innocent really," Georgina says, but even now looks a little starry-eyed at the memory.
Sixteen years later, with two adorable three-year-old twin boys, a Hello-sponsored wedding at the age of 24, and a career that requires that Nicky travels constantly, the marriage is clearly stronger than ever, deserving of its reputation as one of the most unswervingly solid in showbiz.
Just two days after our shoot comes the shock announcement that the Keating marriage has foundered amid accusations of infidelity. On paper, the two couples are carbon copies. Both married and had children young and both women gave up a career to create a home and rear their family. Ronan actually sang at Georgina and Nicky's wedding. And the couples live in the same gated community, Abingdon, in Malahide.
I speak to Georgina again the day after the revelations; she's in Cardiff with Westlife. I ask her what is the key to the success and strength of her own marriage. She seems a bit embarrassed. As a self-confessed non-celebrity, and rare giver of interviews, Georgina hasn't acquired the habit of easy self-reflection, of blithely talking of oneself in the third person, that comes with fame. Nor has she worked up her life story into a neat little history, complete with amusing anecdotes, to be trotted out regularly in various profile-building endeavours.
But it's more than that.
Gushing professions of love and warbling descriptions of one's other half as a rock, saviour and reason to get out of bed in the morning, are not Georgina and Nicky's style. And they're utterly more convincing as a couple for it.
"Hmm...'' She bursts out laughing, a little self-consciously stumped at the request to analyse her own marriage
"I think that, like anything in life, you just have to work at it," Georgina answers. "But when something's important to you, and you're happy in it, it makes it very easy to work at. You just have to make time for each other. Special time. And I suppose just kind of appreciate each other."
Does she find it hard to deal with the female attention that Nicky attracts?
"It's funny, like, we never really questioned that, we were that close and kinda strong. Like obviously, normal girlie jealous, that can come into anybody's life. But not to the point that it overrules life.
"Because I've known him all my life," she continues, "and we're that close, it doesn't really bother me. And I've grown up with him. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure there's times when I'm thinking, 'OK, that might be a little bit more difficult.' You know, when we were younger and getting used to the whole thing."
Georgina hasn't done many interviews and she is understandably nervous. The day we meet, she's wearing skinny denims, hardly any make-up and has perfect skin. With her perfectly proportioned figure and lean, toned limbs, she could easily be a model. In pictures, it's the huge blue eyes you notice first; in person, it's her voice. It's soft, never raised, and has a sort of melodic quality. It's kind of like meeting Bambi.
She is friendly and polite to everyone, and endlessly accommodating with whatever hair, make-up and styling demands we make of her.
As the elder daughter of former Fianna Fail leader, minister and taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Georgina had an easy route to notoriety, if not fame, had she wanted it, before Nicky Byrne ever came on the scene. But to her, like her husband's ambitions for a football and then a musical career, her father's very public career was "kind of just normal; it was just what he did."
"I didn't really know any different, in a sense," she says of growing up with Bertie as a dad.
Despite their separation in the mid- Eighties, Georgina's parents made sure she and her sister Cecelia had an upbringing that was couched in love and support.
"My parents were always very encouraging. So, no matter how good or bad at something you are, they're always very positive," she says. "They always gave us that positive feeling that we can do something, no matter what. My mom was always a stay-at-home mom, and she was always there for us. And I really appreciate that, having her around all the time. And really, I mean, I know my dad worked very hard and he may not have been, like, always there by my side, but he was always there for me, 100 per cent."
Unlike many in her situation, Georgina - or G, as her husband and friends refer to her -- has never capitalised on her marriage to become a professional "wife of". Apart from events for her mother's charity, Cari, she rarely indulges in the various launches, style awards and fashion shows that make up the usual social circuit of the pop star's wife. She has never released a memoir, written a celebrity diary, designed clothes or fronted a make-up line, and you're unlikely to see her bringing out a fitness video or popping up in a reality-TV show.
She has a few friends within the industry - "A few, but not so many. I'd have, like, one or two." Shane Filan's wife Gillian, of course, and she and Nicky are good friends with Shay and Jane Given.
Is it important to her to have a world separate from the celebrity world of her husband's work life? "Yeah, I think so; I like that. Because I'm not in it myself either, you know. And we do have acquaintances, don't get me wrong, that we have met through that and it's fantastic. But yeah, it's nice just to have your own friends away from that," she smiles, and adds, "just doing normal stuff."
From the beginning, it was obvious that theirs wasn't your average teenage relationship.
"It's funny, even back then his mom always treated us nearly like we were a married couple," Georgina tells me, referring to their school days of their early romance. "She'd have lunch ready for me."
A year into the relationship, Nicky went to England to pursue his dream of becoming a professional footballer.
"We just decided, well, we don't wanna break up, so we'll just make it work. So my mom would bring me over," she smiles at the memory.
"And he made surprise visits home all the time. So I suppose it was always exciting and kinda special. There's just a special bond. And I suppose when we had to have a bit of time apart it made it even more special."
Can Georgina remember any of their early dates?
"D'you know what? Compared to most people his age he's always been very mature, very romantic. If he got, like, a day or two off
there would always be a surprise. I'd walk in from school and he'd be sitting on my bed with flowers and chocolates."
Nicky drops in on the photo shoot mid-morning; he's enjoying a few days off from Westlife's current British tour, and is clearly keen to hang out in his wife's company. He's obviously happy to see her at the centre of attention, and proudly takes pictures on his phone.
"I am naturally shy and reserved. Obviously, I've got better through the years," she laughs. "We're opposites in that way, which I like. He is quite charismatic and that's why I do like him and his dancing, and he's quite, like, sexy on stage. For me, the way he is so funny and outgoing and at ease with so many things, I love that relaxed nature."
After two years of playing football in England, Nicky's contract was not renewed and he decided to come home.
"He didn't sit around for long. Him and his dad set up the karaoke band," says Georgina. "He went back and did his Leaving, and I was in college, so it kind of worked."
Within a year or so of his return, Nicky had successfully auditioned for Westlife.
Did she know from the start that the band would change everything?
"Not really, because he was always going to be a footballer," she smiles fondly; fame was clearly always an accepted part of the Nicky package.
"I went in to do a business degree, nothing very interesting; it was just a business management course basically, out in Tallaght. I suppose we still managed, even though we were young, to do our respective things of the moment," she muses.
"It really took off very quickly," she continues, recalling Westlife's instant success. "I remember my first set of exams; he was filming on a beach in Tenerife for videos."
Being together was always the priority. "Every time I was finished something, I was like, 'Right, I just wanna go with him now, I'm free," she laughs. "So I kind of dedicated a lot of my time to doing that."
Was it difficult to maintain a relationship, with one person travelling the world and the other at home in college?
"It was hard because obviously those three years he was kind of everywhere. But I didn't work at the same time I was in college, I was lucky in a way that I had college, worked really hard at it, and then I could go see him as well.
"I knew that it was worth..." she trails off. The 16 years together and the rock-solid relationship speak for themselves.
After college, Georgina split her time between working in Dublin and travelling to wherever Nicky was.
"I worked at home for about two years. I actually got a job that was like three days," she laughs, a little sheepishly, "so that I could go to him. That was ideal, that I was able to finish college, have a little something, and then, you know, go. Because I was determined, you know, to have something. And then travel Thursday, Friday, to the bitter end; like, literally sometimes coming home on Tuesday morning at five o clock."
What did she work at?
"Because I did business management it was just getting experience in recruitment. Nothing major, but it was fun, and it was great to kind of just be doing something".
Was the constant upheaval difficult?
"If that's how I have to see him, you're just gonna go with it, aren't you? You're just going to make it work, you know? If I didn't want to see him, I wouldn't have made that much effort. And likewise with him."
They bought their first house when they were around 22. "But we were never really in it, either, cause we were always away travelling together. And then we got our house in Malahide. And that Christmas he proposed to me. So I was only 23."
Did he ask her father's permission beforehand?
"Christmas Eve, I always meet my dad. So he'd asked my mom first I think, on the phone or something. And then he came out to where my dad was, and asked him."
They got married the following August, and Georgina hit the road, travelling with the band full-time.
"I think I did pretty much travel with him a lot then," she muses.
"It was fun because I was young and it was exciting," she laughs. "It was always really busy and you were moving on. I really enjoyed it, I never got bored.
"Before the babies, I went back to do a fitness course. So I tried to kind of settle again. I just wanted to go back, and kind of have something for myself. I did that and that was only three days, and when I got a little job on that, that was three days. See, I made an effort, I did try," she laughs bashfully, possibly a little nervous of potential lady-of-leisure jibes.
"And then I basically had the boys, so that kind of came to a halt very quick." She breaks off, laughing.
Would she go back to working as a personal trainer?
"I never say never. I like being busy, even though, probably, from the outside, I look like I'm just kind of lazy, bobbing along, but I need to have a project of some sort, to keep me motivated."
Did they sit down and decide to become parents, or did it just happen?
"Yeah, we really wanted to, and I wanted to be young. I was about 27. It was a lovely age," she recalls.
"It ended up being an emergency Caesarean," she says of the twins' birth. Nicky stayed through the entire thing. "It was fine; the only hard part I suppose was just not taking them home. And also, I didn't see them straight away, I had to wait till later that night, and that was all a bit traumatic at the time. But you know, those three weeks of my life seemed like for ever at the time, and I was devastated, but, like, the rest is history, they're fine."
Did you have help, a nanny?
"No, no, because I had all the time, and I wasn't working, and Nicky's mom was around, and my sister, and my mom. And obviously Nicky, that goes without saying. He had a few months off before he went back. Then he went on tour and then he took a year off from when they were one to two, so that was great.
"So we went over to Portugal," she continues, "because we'd just bought a villa, and we kinda had the twin-baby madness there. It was lovely just not having to pack all the bits and bobs, and having a base."
During the photo shoot, Nicky leaves and then returns, having picked up twins Rocco and Jay from creche. They have their father's blond hair but their huge, saucer-like eyes and gentle manners are all their mother's. The boys are keen to check out her outfit, having given her some advice the night before -- green being a favourite colour.
Is she relishing being a full-time mum?
"Yeah, I definitely am enjoying it, and embracing it. And I'd hate to have to rush off from them. Like, I think it is nice to have the best of both worlds," she qualifies, as if anxious not to offend anyone. "To do things for yourself and that as well, but definitely for the first two years, it just goes so fast and they change so much. We went to the gym one time when we were in Portugal, and we came back and Jay had run around the pool, and he hadn't walked yet."
With the prospect of the boys starting school on the horizon, her ability to tour with Nicky will inevitably be circumscribed.
"To be honest, in the last years he hasn't really gone that far, so it's all manageable. In the last while we haven't gone a week without seeing each other. It's not like I'm on the road now; I'm too old. You kind of have to be at home with them."
One nice side effect of her being at home more is that she's seeing more of her dad, who also has more time on his hands these days.
"Yeah, I mean he's always made the effort when he had free time, but now he's, obviously, he's just way more flexible," she says. "It doesn't have to be set times or whatever, and he can kind of just pop out, or we can pop out to him.
"And I've been home a lot more. So we have seen a lot more of each other and he's very calm, he is more chilled out. And he has more time 'cause he doesn't have to rush from A to B. Even if he has two hours off he can enjoy it 'cause he doesn't have to be flying here, there, and everywhere. You can definitely see that in him, he's definitely relaxed and at ease and happy.
"It's lovely seeing him walk around," she says of seeing her father with her boys. "Especially to have, like, even if Nick's away, to have the male influence, because he'll take them round a park and appreciate the worms and spiders a lot more than I can. Lifting up rocks. And it's lovely to see him really enjoying that, and getting stuck in. And they adore him, they do."
If he told her he planned to run for president, what would she say?
"Now? D'you know, I never thought... I never considered it that he would," she says in a tone that suggests it is a possibility that she has recently had to consider.
"I suppose the taoiseach was like the..." she stops, gesturing to indicate the highest one could get.
"But you know, nothing would surprise me now. You know, he's amazing and whatever he puts his mind to he..." she breaks off, laughing almost in bafflement at her father's infinite can do-ism.
And you wouldn't mind seeing him going back into the fray?
"If that's what he wanted, and he was really happy. If that's what he strived to do, I'd be happy for him to. Equally, if he was happy to sit back a little bit more in life and put his feet up, I'd be delighted for him as well."
And with that she is gone, back to her three boys and her idyllic life.
Source : Liadan Hynes
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