Teresa Mannion on retiring: I'm leaving with very mixed emotions
Dominique Farrell
When she leaves RTÉ later this summer, Teresa Mannion will be making a journey from a job she has done for most of her life. Donal O'Donoghue gets her story.
"I'm a jack-of-all trades and always have been," says Teresa Mannion, who will retire from RTÉ later this summer, after a career that has taken in children’s TV presenter, newsroom veteran and most famously, viral sensation for her "Don’t make unnecessary journeys" plea from the TV eye of 2015’s Storm Desmond.
In a life of many journeys – the Dubliner was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013, took to the shiny floor on Dancing with the Stars in 2018 – the regional reporter once imagined a life as a writer or an actress. In a way, she’s got to ride both those horses as a news reporter, someone who has long seen herself as a storyteller and whose own story is intertwined with the state broadcaster.
"I was born the same year that RTÉ Television started, 1961," she says. "We have the same birthday, and I have spent almost all my working life there."
She is at home in Galway, just across the road from the university where her son, Tom (27), is studying for his PhD in English literature.
"It’s 15 minutes’ walk to Eyre Square and 15 minutes in the other direction to the Salthill promenade," she says. She lives here with her husband, Dave O’Connell (group editor of the Connacht Tribune) and Tom, while the couple’s other son, Cian (28), lives in Dublin where he works as a freelance journalist with the Irish Times.
A native Dubliner, she moved to the City of the Tribes in 2007 when she was appointed RTÉ’s regional reporter for the West, having lived previously in Athlone. She is still a proud "Northside Dub" but her home has long been in the west, having met her husband, an Oughterard man, when they were both covering the St Patrick’s Day Parade in Galway.
She turns 65 on September 15, officially her last day in RTÉ, but with holidays and whatnot she will be gone before then.
"I’ve been working in RTÉ since my college days at Rathmines, a roving reporter during the summer break," she says. "My big break was getting to work as a presenter on Youngline. I had just turned 21. In 1983, I won a Jacob’s Award (with Mary Dinan) for co-presenting Youngline but that same year the show was axed. So, I went from being an award-winning TV presenter to being on the dole queue. There was always that insecurity even though you were doing this job that so many dream of doing."
In 1986, she was working in America when she got a call from RTÉ.
"I was in the middle of a waitressing job when I was asked if I would come back to do a science programme for young people called Zero. A few years later, I made it my business to find out who the head of news was and at the end of that summer of ’89, there were full-time jobs advertised for the newsroom. I applied and got a staff position."
News has been her beat ever since. "Once you conquer news you can do anything after that, I believe," she says. "I still remember the terror of those early newsroom jobs, all those firsts: the first time I was in the courts covering a murder trial, the first time interviewing Charlie Haughey, the first time reporting on a general election. I kept saying to myself, you’re a storyteller, just tell the story. I also did an internship in Atlanta with CNN but apart from those various detours and odd jobs, I’ve been with RTÉ forever so I’m leaving with very mixed emotions."
Was she tempted to stay longer?
"I dithered before deciding that it was time to go. I had that health scare in 2013 (diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer) and I felt that while I have my health and I’m able to travel and be independent, I want to see places and spend time with my family."
She is one of seven children and grew up in Ballygall on the northside of Dublin.
"My dad was a train driver with the Dart, my mam was a homebuilder, and it was all about the family," she says. "For the summer holidays, we were farmed out to the relatives in Mayo and Roscommon. We knew the value of things, that money didn’t grow on trees. Nowadays, my boys roll their eyes when I say things like 'You’re so privileged’. It was not Angela’s Ashes, but we did have a work ethic and that, I think, makes you resilient and self-reliant and that has stood to me in my career I believe.
"My mother, who died last April, was a real homemaker and had a few cottage industries going with her Singer sewing machine, making hats and ponchos for a local factory and us all lined up helping her, like little elves. She was also a childminder and the kids that she minded would visit her in the nursing home and always called her nana."
Following her Leaving Certificate, she studied media at the College of Commerce in Rathmines, Dublin.
"I loved writing from the beginning, always scribbling short stories," she recalls. "I now look at my son Tom and think how much he’s like me when I was a child, except he has published a book (the recent fantasy epic, Lichtenberg). My claim to fame is that one of my stories was published by David Marcus in the Irish Press for Young Irish Writing. That was so exciting.
"I can still remember my parents being so proud and the nun mentioning it over the intercom at school which was as much of a buzz as anything I got in RTÉ. I thought I’d eventually go into that world of writing, and I also had notions of becoming an actress. But I suppose there are lots of different ways of telling stories. On radio or TV, if you get it right, you can make a report sing."
She lists some stories that linger.
"When I came to Galway in 2007 as regional reporter, one of the first stories I did was the murder of the Swiss teenager, Manuela Riedo" she says. "I travelled to Switzerland to cover the funeral, met Manuela’s family and friends. She was an only child, but the people of Galway rallied around that family and every year they came back and released balloons on the beach at Salthill. I still think of that story.
"In more recent times, there’s the paddle boarders who went missing for 15 hours at sea. It was not expected to end well. I was in the Midlands when the story broke about them being found. I raced across to Galway and just before going live on air, I asked the fisherman who found them with his son, ‘Are they alive?’ They were. That was one of the most memorable good news stories."
But, of course, the story everyone remembers is the one that went around the social media world and was famously lip-synched by Daisy Edgar-Jones in the promotion of her 2024 film, Twisters.
"The ‘unnecessary journeys’ quote is with me for life," she says. "Hardly a day goes by that someone doesn’t say it to me. It’s the gift that keeps giving. And now it’s almost a cultural reference point.
"I’ll be on Reeling in the Years forever more and I must accept that’s what I will always be associated with despite having done so many other things and work that I’m proud of, from hard news to the tragedies and all in-between, but that story will always remain, in a good way. Down the years, I’ve been approached with a lot of stuff linked to that quote but as I worked in the newsroom I couldn’t. But who knows going forward what I might do? I might review those options."
In 2013, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Fortunately, it was caught early and apart from the annual check-up, all is well.
"When I got my BreastCheck letter in early 2013, it lay unopened for ages," she says.
"I thought afterwards, ‘Shame on me’: this is available for free and the clinic is just around the corner from where I live. So, I was lucky. It was very early detection and I would encourage everyone to avail of these services because they can save your life. I’m doing really well now: healthy and maybe not doing enough exercise, apart from going for walks on the promenade. I got so fit doing Dancing With The Stars, which was something I figured ‘Why not?’"
Does she still dance? "Only around the kitchen these days," she says and laughs. "Dancing With The Stars was the hardest thing ever. I never experienced terror quite like it, that moment just before you are introduced and you’re petrified that you’ll fall down those steps leading to the dancefloor."
On the eve of her retirement, Teresa Mannion has no idea where her next journey will take her. Time enough to figure that out. For now, there is the dream of a visit to Japan, which has been on the must-do list for yonks. Maybe next springtime in Kyoto, when the cherry blossoms.
She is also juggling, with the notion of following her friend Cathy Halloran into the academic world, lecturing on media matters, putting all that experience into life lessons for the next generation of journalists. And maybe, as she says, she can tap into her USP as the ‘Don’t Make Unnecessary Journeys’ woman. But for now, there is just one more journey to make as she leaves the building and the business for the last time.
RTÉ Lifestyle.