Catching Happiness

The past few months have been busy for broadcaster Noelle McCarthy. Not only has she got married, but she has quit life in Auckland for a quiet country town in the Wairarapa – and turned 40. She talks to Nicola Russell about “growing up” and the joy of slowing down.

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When broadcaster Noelle McCarthy moved to New Zealand in 2003, she carried a notebook with two names written in the back – musician PJ Harvey and writer Jane Austen. “It was a reminder to myself as a woman that I didn’t need to have a husband and children, and those sorts of domestic trappings, in order to be fully realised.”

The Irish-born star with the distinctive brown curls was 24 then, and was beginning her broadcasting career as the news and editorial director at bFM. Sixteen years on, Noelle is happily married to author John Daniell. Together they have an almost two-year-old daugher, Eve, and have recently moved to the countryside in Featherston, Wairarapa. Noelle is learning to garden and has a chicken house ready to fill with a brood of hens. It wasn’t in her plans – it all happened in a whirlwind just before she turned 40.

“I still hate the narrative that marriage is when your life starts in earnest,” says the journalist best known for her eight years hosting RNZ’s Summer Noelle. “But when it came down to it, the actual decision to be committed to John felt like a natural progression and made me feel quite calm and happy. Because I’m not looking to another person to fix me or constantly stimulate me – all those things I can do for myself. And I feel like I’ve got something to bring to the party.”

A different kind of party from her 20s. While she’s still the charming and lively fashionista (except sometimes when she’s sporting Marmite stains and tending the hydrangeas), Noelle is now fiercely focused on her work and her family.