This story is part of the October 20 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories . Ronan Keating is a singer, best known for being part of 1990s band Boyzone.
Here, the 47-year-old shares how his mother’s death devastated him, his shocking first kiss and how he met his now-wife working in Australia. I wasn’t drawn to any serious relationships until I lost Mum; that’s when I tried to replace that mother figure in my life. My maternal nanny was very close to my mum [Marie].
I have vivid memories of them drinking cups of tea at the kitchen table inside her small house in Dublin. She was a homemaker and my grandpa worked as a police sergeant. My paternal grandmother had 10 children and raised my dad [Gerry] on a dairy farming community in Killinkere, County Cavan, Ireland.
She would wake him at 4am before school to get him to milk the cows. I never got to meet her. My mum and I were very close.
I am the youngest of five, and when all my siblings left the family home, I was there with Mum a lot. She died aged 51 from breast cancer in 1998, when I was 20. That was the most devastating thing that ever happened to me.
Mum was very supportive of my decision to answer an advert in the newspaper to audition for Boyzone. I don’t think she really knew what it all meant. She was very religious and for a while feared I had joined some religious cult! It wasn’t until we released our first single and it was a hit that she realised what I was actually doing.
Mum made sure I always cam.
