Marie O’Sullivan, born on November 19th, 1933, the voice of radio, television and cinema commercials in the 1960s, and one of the first continuity announcers on Telefís Éireann, died on December 2nd, 2024.
She will be best remembered as a broadcaster and, throughout the 1970s, the face of afternoon TV, but she was also a pioneering speech therapist working in the field decades before it was recognised in Ireland.
The date of her death, on December 2nd, coincidentally fell on the 63rd anniversary of the promotional tour of Ireland she undertook with fellow announcers – Nuala Donnelly and the late Kathleen Watkins – ahead of the opening night of Irish television on New Year’s Eve, 1961.
“It was a PR exercise, really, even though it wasn’t called that in those days,” Marie O’Sullivan said when the trio reunited 40 years later. “It was supposed to make the people who were outside of the Pale feel included.”
A neuropsychologist’s view on how to thrive in an angry, unpredictable world
Ireland in the 1980s was backward, poor and stagnant. Some politicians want to bring us back there
Predictions? It’s difficult to do anything but peer fearfully around the corner into this new year
Ten predictions experts made about the world in 2025. All of them are wrong
And, as a piece in the Ballina Herald illustrated, the “Meet the People” tour, as it was called, was well-judged because some people in the regions did indeed feel excluded. When details of the countrywide route were released, journalist Thomas Woulfe wrote: “Those who have been howling murder over the lack of information on the nature of Telefís Éireann’s opening programmes may have to swallow some of their ire after this announcement.”
By 1961, Marie O’Sullivan was already an accomplished broadcaster.
She had started to work in Radio Éireann the decade before, voicing radio and cinema commercials. She also had TV experience, very unusual for the time, having completed a training course at the BBC in 1956. It was there she developed her “BBC accent”, or her “telephone voice”, as her family called it.
She also worked as a speech and drama teacher at several Dublin schools and as a speech therapist, a field still in its infancy in the 1950s. One of her first clients was a training priest who feared his stammer would stop him being ordained but, in a case reminiscent of the King’s Speech, she helped him to overcome his difficulty.
Her love of speech, drama and, in particular, language was honed at Muckross Park College in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, where she took part in several school plays. While playing Yum Yum in The Mikado, she met Christian Brothers College (CBC) pupil Eoin O’Sullivan. They were a couple for 75 years.
She grew up in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, but moved to Dublin, aged 12, with her parents Tess and Frank O’Donnell and her younger sister Miriam. She excelled at Muckross, going on to become head girl and captain of the hockey team. She later played for Leinster. She was also a gifted swimmer, representing Pembroke Swimming Club.
She married Eoin O’Sullivan in June 1958, aged 24, and unusual for the time, continued to work. As independent contractors, RTÉ's first female broadcasters were exempt from the marriage bar which obliged women to resign their posts after marriage.
In the late 1970s, she stepped back from broadcasting to look after her four children full-time, but she remained deeply interested in current affairs.
Her wide range of interests included poetry, a good book, the arts, furniture restoration, flower arranging, gardening and being a reader at her local church in Foxrock, Dublin. The biggest of all her interests, though, was people. When she died last month, she was remembered as beautiful, loyal, kind and welcoming but, most of all, as a lady.
She is survived by her husband of 66 years, Eoin; her children, Kate, Owen, Frank and Donel; sister Miriam; son-in-law Maurice; daughters-in-law Maria, Fiona and Linda; grandchildren Kara, Mark, Kym, Eli and Tien; godchildren, nieces, nephews, extended family, neighbours and friends.