“He said, ‘You’re taking the two dogs?’” Halfway up Bray Head, Roz Purcell laughs as she recalls her new husband Zach Desmond’s bemused reaction when he discovered she was heading out for an Irish Times photo shoot up a 241-metre hill in Wicklow with their dogs in tow. Never work with children or animals, goes the famous saying, but Purcell is making it look easy. Fresh-faced, in a green top, wide-legged trousers and trekking shoes, Purcell is corralling her Jack Russells – Willay and his younger, more excitable comrade Myla – picking her way up Bray Head and turning to the camera to strike a pose. She’s packed goodies for the dogs in a bag at her waist. (“Treat!” beseeches the photographer, as the pooches prick up ears and root themselves to the spot in quivering expectation.) The green of her top contrasts with the yellow gorse flowers, as puffball clouds hang over the Irish Sea and the sweet scent of honeysuckle drifts on the breeze. Purcell was once a model, competing in Miss Universe 2010 (then part-owned by Donald Trump), and working in New York. These days, the 35-year-old is best known as an Instagrammer, radio presenter, author of three recipe books and two books on hiking. She is also the owner of a forest near her family home in Tipperary. This year she’s in celebration mode. She has a newish job in RTÉ 2FM – she began co-hosting the flagship breakfast show last summer, with an extra hour added to the programme this May – and she recently married Desmond, her partner of nine years. Although she can sound giddily enthusiastic on air, in person Purcell radiates a quieter strength and confidence. She’s chatty and likable, if careful in certain areas – mainly anything relating to her in-laws (her new mother-in-law, Caroline Desmond, is Hozier’s manager and her father-in-law, Denis Desmond, is co-founder and managing director of MCD Productions). Few people would agree to hike up a hill while being interviewed, but Purcell – as a committed hiker, fake tan abdicator and real talk advocator – accepts the invitation for a casual walk and talk, with a photographer tagging along. As we walk, her conversation roams easily between topics, from model castings to big life decisions to hiking apparel. She’s wearing Keen shoes today: “They’re very light: they don’t look weird when I’m climbing Bray Head, but I could do Carrauntoohil in them at the same time.”The interview has been arranged by 2FM to talk about the radio show, but like most newlyweds, she easily drifts into chat about her new husband. Not that she often uses the term. Boyfriend, partner, the person she’s “going out with” is fine. Husband? It’s a shock. “I keep forgetting to say it!” she says. “I feel like I’m so young to be getting married, I’m 35 and when I say ‘husband’, I’m like, ‘Wow, this is huge!’” Roz Purcell: 'The industry is so quick to move. There’s plenty of people to come along and take your space.' Photograph: Liadh Connolly, assisted by Robbie Mullins The couple met in a “very awkward” set-up by mutual friends at Life festival in Westmeath, and got married in two ceremonies this year, two-and-a-half years after Zach proposed at the Cliffs of Moher. The first – a small, glamorous ceremony at City Hall in Dublin in March – arose more or less by accident. [ 32 great hikes around Ireland – one in every countyOpens in new window ]They had intended to get the “scary, legal” bit done simply in a registry office before the proper celebration in Galway. But when they were booking, a woman convinced them City Hall would be nice and there was a rare opening in 2026. “It came up and we were like, ‘This is a pretty big venue for a legal marriage.’”Just 12 people attended the legal ceremony, with 70 joining the couple for their bigger wedding celebration in Ballynahinch Castle in Galway in May. Both events became fodder for the media, with images of Purcell’s two dresses – the first a vintage gown from Farmer’s Daughter in New York, the second handmade by Irish designer Sasha Donnellan – beamed everywhere online. “Zach was like, ‘I can’t believe we’re those people who got married twice,’” she says. “I was like, I got to wear two dresses.”They were glad to get the legal part done. Both were nervous at the legal ceremony (“so nervous we both hardly remember a thing”), and felt better able to relax at the Galway celebration. “I hate when people are looking at me,” Purcell says. “When I was younger I was fine with it, but now I’ve spent so many years behind a phone screen, not really being on TV or just being on radio, that actually being around a lot of people is really uncomfortable for me, especially if everyone’s looking at me. Some people love the attention. But I have grown to hate it.”She says this sincerely. Purcell may be famously photogenic, but these days you’re most likely to find her in a small studio in the old radio building at RTÉ in Donnybrook, where – down the faded carpet hallway from Radio One’s Studio 6 and Studio 7, alongside her co-hosts Aisling Bonner and Carl Mullan – she’s live on air on 2FM from 6am-10am weekdays. 2FM Breakfast: Carl Mullan, Roz Purcell and Aisling Bonner. Photograph: Evan Doherty/RTÉ She’s passionate about the show. “There’s something about radio,” she says. Two or three days a week she trains before the show, so she gets up at 4.30am, leaves the dogs out, has a coffee, and goes for a run or a HIIT session. On arrival at Donnybrook she’s joined by her co-hosts, producer Jon-Jon Mehigan (“he’s so chilled, that’s what you need doing live radio”) and broadcast co-ordinator Louise Tighe. Having a team helps them gauge the success of their chats, as they can see reactions on the faces around them in real time. “Our show is light and entertaining so it’s nice to have people to look out at who will be laughing or reacting as well,” she says. The show is music-led, but the segments – anything from games like “Heads or Fails, the best clickbait headline, people get so creative” to entertainment titbits – are important. “Between six and seven is probably the hardest,” Purcell says. “You’re trying to wake up. That’s the hour that when I listen back, I go, ‘Oh God.’” She tries not to dwell on mistakes. “There’s a lot of passive listening. People aren’t as critical of you as you are of yourself.”Reviews have been positive, with Mick Heaney of The Irish Times saying “the presenters generate a sparky chemistry”. (The station conducted chemistry tests to find presenters who each brought something to the table, and gelled well.) On the breakfast show, Purcell says, everyone develops a kind of character. What’s hers? “My producer did see me as the wholesome conspiracy theorist,” she laughs. “Which I don’t agree with. Carl is the real funny guy who has toilet humour and dad jokes. Ais is more strait-laced, the matriarch. And they all take the piss out of me that I’m vegan.”Purcell hasn’t changed her Tipperary accent for Montrose, although she has sometimes agonised about her vocals. “If you listen back to your own voice, you’re like, ‘Why do I sound like that?’” So she didn’t try to develop a radio jock voice, then? “I think I tried to do that at the start. It’s really hard to fake it every day.” Purcell grew up in Tipperary with two older sisters and two busy working parents: her mother was a school principal, her father a farmer. She was raised partially by her grandparents, who lived in the house beside theirs. “They were always there,” she says. “They were retired. That’s how I learnt to cook and bake. They were with us 24/7. I slept there. A lot of my childhood memories would be around them, whether watching The Late Late Show together, Winning Streak, or going fishing.”‘My dream would be to probably end up in Tipperary. Because my family is based in Tipperary and it’s such a beautiful spot’— Roz PurcellSchool was a challenge. She wasn’t book-smart in the conventional sense. But she felt proud when she won an essay competition at 14, and got the chance to live in Ecuador with a host family for the summer, representing Ireland as a youth ambassador. “My teachers were shocked. In front of the class, my teacher was like, ‘I can’t believe it, can anyone believe Roz got it?’” While Purcell was studying history and politics in UCD, she was talent-spotted in Dundrum. Her friend had wanted to enter a modelling competition. Instead, “They gave me their card.” At 19 she became Miss Universe Ireland, making the finals of the Miss Universe competition in 2010, and moving to New York to pursue modelling, pounding the streets, handing out portfolios, going for castings. It didn’t work out the way she had hoped. That still upsets her. Her face drops as she recalls what it felt like to move back to Ireland. “I didn’t stay because I wasn’t working. There was a certain look they were going for and I wasn’t it.” At 20, she began to internalise the critiques handed to her. “It was always said to me at agencies, ‘If you could only be small, you could make it.’ I was always trying to get small.”Back in Ireland, she overtrained, restricted her diet and told little lies to make people think she’d eaten. In retrospect, it’s easy for her to see the eating disorder for what it was. But at the time it was normalised, and not only by her. “If I wasn’t eating, people were like, ‘She’s a model.’ I used to have constant heart palpitations. I thought that was normal until I recovered from having an eating disorder. I haven’t had them since.”Therapy gave her the insight she needed to help herself. Her sister Rachel was diagnosed with leukaemia around that time, making her realise with a jolt, as someone told her, “your body is not just for show”. “Rachel is in fantastic health. But it was such a scary time as a family. It was a pivotal moment. That was the first time I remember not thinking about my body, just focusing on her and her body and how healthy it could be. That was a huge wake-up moment for me because I was treating my body so poorly.”It was a slow road with plenty of about-turns. “Recovery wasn’t linear,” she says of her early 20s. “I didn’t ever really have fun. It was all about being in control of everything.” When was a time when things started to go right? “Probably when I met Zach,” she says. “I’m not romantic at all, but I was recovering from the eating disorder, I was feeling a lot more confident with how I physically am. I met him and from 25 to lockdown really, I had the fun I was meant to have in my early 20s. He made me feel very secure, so I wasn’t that conscious of my body. That was really nice.”Roz Purcell with her Jack Russells Willay and Myla on Bray Head in Co Wicklow. Photograph: Liadh Connolly, assisted by Robbie Mullins Purcell was impressed by how Desmond talked about the women in his life. “He loves his mum and sister so much. He has so much respect for all the women in his life and spoke so highly of them.” Desmond is a concert promoter, and music has knitted the two families together. “My parents always come to festivals and gigs. They’ve met [Zach’s parents] for years. Now they’re both retired, they want to go to everything. Zach always has an ear out for the next big thing.” He regularly chats to her dad on the phone. “Zach and my dad are best friends. That’s special to me, because I’m very close with my dad.”The security of her relationship helped when it came to the stresses of organising the wedding, and the private fears she had around it. She has suffered from alopecia for the last six years, which she believes has been caused by stress. (“It could be good stress, bad stress. It’s almost insinuated that you have to be emotionless in order for nothing to happen.”) And she knew a wedding could be triggering for her as someone with a history of disordered eating. “It was definitely one of the first times where I felt, ‘Oh my God, I need to lose weight.’ I started to have those dieting thoughts. I’ve come so far away from an eating disorder, it was like I was almost coming full circle back around. But I didn’t. I’m older and I might have those eating disorder thoughts, but they move off a lot quicker. They don’t stay with me.”A message sent to her recently stuck in her mind. It was intended to be nice, but didn’t come off that way. “I got a message after the wedding, someone saying, ‘Oh, it’s really great to see someone not lose loads of weight before their wedding.’” Purcell didn’t reply. “I’m not in the head space to have an argument,” she says.She’s more protective of herself than she used to be online. Sometimes that’s a good thing – “I used to debate for the sake of it, now I wouldn’t be bothered.” Occasionally she wonders if a new timidity is coming into play. “I’ve become quite scared about speaking about anything. That’s come with years of being online and people being like, ‘You’re not saying that right,’ or picking things apart.” She keeps her online conversations upbeat, targeted and helpful. If a successful woman online often falls into two categories – relatable or aspirational – Purcell cleaves more closely to the former: she’s comfortable highlighting her vulnerabilities (her 667,000 Instagram fans may remember her photo series where she showed her sucky-in-tummy pics versus her candid ones), and speaking on personal subjects.[ Insider tips for perfect days out in neighbourhoods around Dublin, Limerick, Galway and beyondOpens in new window ]“We’re so unsure,” she says, when asked if she would like children in the future. “I don’t have that maternal instinct but then I’m also thinking, ‘Oh shit, I’m at that crossroads,’ I’m constantly trying to weigh it up. Whenever I go to the doctor now, ‘Are you going to have kids?’ is the question that keeps coming up.”Roz Purcell: 'I hate when people are looking at me. When I was younger I was fine with it ... Some people love the attention. But I have grown to hate it'. Photograph: Liadh Connolly, assisted by Robbie Mullins As a contractor to RTÉ, she worries about losing her slot. “The industry is so quick to move. There’s plenty of people to come along and take your space.” And she frets about losing her ability to travel and hike. “The hiking thing, I worry about not being able to do that, because it does so much for me.” For her head? “Yeah.” Even on our short hike today, you can see that side to her. On the trail, we pass a tiny creature washing its face, sitting directly in the path in front of us. “It’s a pygmy shrew,” Purcell observes. “They’re a protected species. The dogs are actually scared of it.” A light smattering of rain begins to fall as we reach the summit of Bray Head, where a gathering of hikers are spread out around the large concrete cross, admiring the view. “There used to be a giant obelisk over there, but it got bombed,” Purcell says, pointing. “There’s the Sugar Loaf.” [ Carl, Roz & Aisling’s on-air vibes trump cookie-cutter formulas on 2FM’s new breakfast showOpens in new window ]Hiking back down, we pass an area of blackened gorse. In May, a large fire on Bray Head took many hours for crews to tackle, one of numerous fires in the area. “It could be by accident,” Purcell says. “People setting off disposable barbecues. It could be vandalism.” Earlier this week, after our meeting, a massive wildfire engulfed the area close to Purcell’s family home at the foot of Slievenamon in Tipperary. “People are bawling crying trying to protect their houses,” she said on Thursday on Instagram, reporting from the smoke-filled roads, as fire fighters tackled the blaze.Three years ago, Purcell used her savings to buy a forest just up the road from her family home. Rewilding it is one of her goals. “It’s mostly non-native,” she says. “I’ll have to do some felling to remove some of the non-native species and replant. A lot of wildlife live around there, and there’s an old dwelling that I used to spend so much time in as a kid, hiking.” She’s training for her Mountain Leadership award, so she can lead groups in the mountains, hills and moorlands. She sees herself living closer to home one day. “My dream would be to probably end up in Tipperary. Because my family is based in Tipperary and it’s such a beautiful spot. I’d love to just rescue loads of animals, have a chilled existence.” Hiking up Bray Head may suit Purcell for today, but it also offers a fairly neat metaphor for her climb in life in general. It’s a nice hill to ascend, but she’s got plenty more challenges in front of her – she just has to figure out which ones she wants to tackle.