Carol, who has presented weather forecasts on BBC Breakfast for over two decades and was made an MBE in 2021 for services to broadcasting, opened up about the private pain behind her trademark on-screen positivity.

Carol Kirkwood is always a ray of sunshine whenever she’s presenting the weather on BBC Breakfast, but in a new interview, the star has revealed the toll that her bubbly persona took on her when she was going through a rough patch in her life. In 2008, the former Strictly Come Dancing contestant split from her husband, Jimmy, but she still had to put on a brave face whenever she did her weather links, despite wanting to cry on the inside.

Speaking to Candis magazine, in an interview published in their October 2025 issue, she explained: “I’d still have to be smiling Carol on-screen. I’d come off air – we broadcast from the Blue Peter gardens in those days – go to the ladies, have a good cry, and then reapply my eye make-up before stepping in front of the cameras again. In a funny way, though, it helped with the healing process. I put my grief into a compartment that I kept separate from my work, otherwise I’d have ended up in a puddle of tears.”

Carol split from her first husband, Jimmy Kirkwood, in 2008 after nearly two decades of marriage. She began dating her now-husband, former police officer and entrepreneur Steve Randall, in 2017, and the pair tied the knot in December 2023 at Cliveden House in Buckinghamshire.

Comments on divorce

Carol, who is now married to Steve Randall, doesn’t often speak about her personal life, but last year, in an interview with The Times, she compared her two marriages. “Love is lovelier the second time around,” she told the publication. “No disrespect to my first husband, but this is better.” She also shared how her new partner is “a very good cook and tidy as well — tidier than I am”.

Talking about their big day last December, when she tied the knot with her beau, who is 13 years her junior, in front of a “very small” guest list at Cliveden House, the Scottish star said: “It was very small as well and intimate so you didn’t have to worry that Auntie Nellie didn’t have a glass of sherry in her hand. You know, that kind of thing.”

Carol also described her nuptials as “perfect”, despite the fact that she could have been bogged down with weather fears. “There was a storm! Storm Gerrit, can you believe it? But we didn’t even notice it,” she added. The couple’s first dance was to Ed Sheeran’s Perfect, which was released in 2017, the year that the couple first started dating.

Carol is now happily married to Steve Randall

When asked which song cheers her up in a Q&A-style interview, the weather presenter said: “Perfect by Ed Sheeran. I met my husband when that song was out so it cheers me up because it reminds me of him. It’s just so beautiful and was the first song at our wedding.”