Personal Life
"Morah Brennan" redirects here. "Morah Ryan" redirects here too.Ryan was married for 26 years to his wife Morah, with whom he had five children: Lottie (born c. 1987), Rex (born c. 1990), Bonnie (born c. 1993), Elliott (born c. 1997) and Babette (born c. 2000). When he worked for the pirate radio station Big D, Morah helped him with his programme. She helped her future husband put the music together and carry the equipment. He paid her £3 out of the £15 he earned.
When they first married, the Ryans had very little money. Pat Kenny gave up a bed for Ryan and his wife to use while on honeymoon in Greece. Ryan obtained a mortgage by lying about his salary and bought a little house in Marino. The couple had some difficulty making their payments and they were constantly receiving reminders and even notices of foreclosure.
In March 2008, Ryan announced he and Morah were separating, and called the separation a very painful experience.
Later in 2008, he began a relationship with the former South African Ambassador to Ireland and the then UNICEF Ireland executive director, Melanie Verwoerd. In 2011, Melanie Verwoerd said she was “deeply shocked” to have been sacked from the charity because of the publicity surrounding her relationship with the deceased broadcaster.
It was claimed that Ryan was known by some to be a cocaine user, allegedly offering to the former RTÉ Radio DJ Gareth O'Callaghan. Ryan's former sister-in-law, Janice O'Brien said: "Many people who knew Gerry knew he took drugs. It was an accepted open secret for years. He used everywhere -- birthday parties, Christmas parties. I'm not the only person in the world that knows this".
Read more about this topic: Gerry Ryan
Famous quotes related to personal life:
“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters ‘woman’s peculiar sphere,’ her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)
“A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To ‘see the light’ too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)