When you hear the term influencer, you instantly think of seflies, makeup, fashion, travel – ‘lifestyle’ content. But Rachel Gorry is no ordinary influencer.
Unlike her fellow leading social media stars, a devastating event is what plunged Rachel into the media spotlight she finds herself in now. And her content has been like no other’s; raw, real and devastatingly honest.
Now with over 283k followers on Instagram alone, the brunette is one of Ireland’s leading influencers, with large brand deals, one business and two Gossies awards under her belt (Best Newcomer and Influencer of the Year).
Rachel, 34, began to cultivate a large following when she shared the reality of her husband Daniel dying of cancer on her channel.
A young mother, her early videos showed her in the front seat of her car, crying as she spoke about how many days Daniel might have left, often while in the carpark of a hospital.
After Daniel’s devastating passing, many followers, including myself, hoped that one day Rachel would find love again. She was just 29 when Daniel died, and with three daughters and a household to run, it was clear that moving forward was not going to be an easy road.
Thankfully, a lot has changed for Rachel, and there is light and love in her life once again. it’s clear that Rachel is the happiest she’s been in a very long time, something she absolutely doesn’t need to apologise for (despite some trolls demanding she does).
Madly in love with her new partner, Rachel admits she hit “rock bottom” before love came knocking on her door again.
While she is currently one of the most popular social media stars in Ireland, Rachel admits she fell into her life as a full-time content creator “by accident” and jokes that she is “the worst influencer ever”, admitting that she can barely take a photo of herself out in public.
Even as we sit down for a chat in Goss HQ before her inaugural cover shoot, Rachel nervously laughs as she admits she’s “allergic” to situations like this.
“I think people are now setting out to be influencers, whereas that would have been the last thing I thought I would ever have done,” she confessed. “Like see this photoshoot now? Oh my God, I’m allergic to this. When it comes to taking pictures and stuff like that… I dread it.”
“Even if we’re going to an event, I’ll take a photograph of myself in the dress in the hotel room and that’s it. When I’m out, you wouldn’t see me going ‘oh take my picture’. I’m so awkward.”
So how exactly did Rachel land herself into the world of selfies, brand deals, fashion and beauty? Well, it really is all thanks to Daniel’s encouragement.
The mother-of-three created her Instagram account at the start of 2020, while she was still working in interior design.
Rachel and her husband had just built their dream home in Offaly, and her longtime love had suggested the brunette set up the page as a hobby, so she could share her tips on interiors.
“I’m the worst influencer ever”
From the outside looking in, Rachel and Daniel had the perfect life, they married in 2012 and shared three daughters together – Leah, Holly and Hannah.
But behind closed doors, Rachel’s beloved husband, who she had been with since she was 16, was battling terminal cancer.
Daniel had been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in September 2018, and when Rachel eventually mentioned her husband’s illness on Instagram, her account quickly blew up and gained thousands of followers.
People were so taken by the couple’s devastating situation. Followers were heartbroken to see someone as sweet, young and genuine as Rachel, go through something so painful. On April 1st, 2020, Daniel sadly passed away at the age of 29, surrounded by Rachel and their three young children.
Since then, Rachel has candidly documented her life after Daniel, from dealing with grief as a young mum, to her struggle to “move on” from her teenage sweetheart – her honesty has struck a chord with people across the nation.
This April will mark five years since Daniel passed away; “Sometimes it feels like 10 years ago, and then sometimes it only feels like yesterday. It’s crazy,” she admits.
“It feels like so long ago and then I talk about something and I’m right back there as if it was just yesterday. It’s mad.”
Losing her husband at such a young age, Rachel has been through things no one should ever have to experience. Looking back, I ask how she managed to cope during that time of her life.
“I don’t know how I did it,” she candidly admits. “The kids were so small. When Daniel was first diagnosed, he was 27, we just sold the house, and the kids were one, three, and five,” she recalls.
“And then we were trying to build the house, and then obviously, the news, every scan, everything just kept getting worse and worse and worse for nearly two years.
“And then when he died, the kids were three, five, and nine. And I just think, at the time, you do it because you have to do it. You don’t have a choice. And you keep just powering through, and you hold on to any bit of hope that maybe some miracle will happen or whatever.”
“When I look back, I don’t know how I did it…”
“Sometimes I look back at videos and we’re laughing and smiling, and Daniel could be in the hospital bed and he looks so sick and he looks so frail, and we’re laughing. And I think now, ‘how are you laughing?’,” she admits.
“But we did laugh. And we had great times. It wasn’t like, ‘oh god doom and gloom, 18 months you knew he was going to die, it must have been awful’. It was, but we also had really fun, happy times.”
“If you don’t laugh you’ll cry,” I tell Rachel, she nods: “One hundred percent, and I think that was just our motto.”
Rachel explains that Daniel’s funeral was one of the most difficult days in her life, and says that if it weren’t for her daughters, she doesn’t think she could have held herself together.
“When I think back, I think what you can go through in life is just incredible. And when you have to do something, you don’t have a choice,” she admits.
“I remember being in the room and we were saying goodbye to Daniel and the lid of his coffin was being put on, and I thought this is the last time I’m going to see him. I’m not going to be able to handle it. And that was what I was really fearing.
“And I remember Hannah, she was three at the time, and she was like ‘Wake up, Daddy’. And I was like, I can’t break down in front of these kids. I wanted to do nothing more than scream and wail, but I couldn’t. I was like, right, you need to be strong for the girls and let them say goodbye to their daddy.”
“I wanted to do nothing more than scream and wail, but I couldn’t”
“Now it’s horrendous and when I think back now it brings tears to my eyes. But at the time, I was thinking ‘you have to be strong for them’. I remember crying when they were lowering his body into the ground, and I was like, you can’t lose it crying because your kids are standing there and they’re not fully understanding what’s taking place either.”
“So I think maybe it would have been different if I didn’t have the kids, I think the kids kept me going.”
“You kind of have to put your feelings aside because you have three little people here looking at me like, ‘Mammy, what’s happening? Why are all these people here?’ They couldn’t understand.
“I think that’s probably how you get through, because otherwise I probably would have thrown myself on the coffin,” she admits.
Although she’s been in the spotlight for five years now, Rachel says she still is not used to being in the public eye.
“I still think it’s a little bit crazy how people might come up to you and want to take pictures. I actually haven’t gotten used to that yet, it’s a bit mad.”
“The kids will say; ‘are you famous?’ And I’m like, no,” she laughs.
But while Rachel still hasn’t got to grips with being so well known, she laughs; “I think the kids are more used to it than I am. They just say that mammy works online”
“I kind of fell into it by accident. I wouldn’t have thought I was fashionable or that people would have been interested in anything else other than the few bits in the house.
“And that was more so to keep myself busy and for my love of interiors, more so than ‘oh, I’d be a great influencer’. That was the last thing on my mind.
“And then it just kind of progressed… and I thought if I can stay at home and take care of the kids and work everything around them, then its a no-brainer.”
While Rachel has been inundated with support on social media since she first shared Daniel’s diagnosis, she has also experienced the brutal dark side of sharing your life online.
The mother-of-three has sadly been at the receiving end of “evil” trolling online, which started even before Daniel passed away.
“I feel like at the start, I was so shocked by the trolling. It really took me aback because the page grew so quickly because of Daniel’s situation, so I never had time to gradually build my followers to get an odd comment here and there,” she explains.
“So when the trolling came, it was harsh trolling. It wasn’t just like ‘oh, you’re ugly’ or ‘oh, your clothes aren’t nice’. It was evil trolling. So I suppose that really upset me.”
“When the trolling came, it was harsh trolling… it was evil”
“Messages like ‘I’m delighted your husband’s dead’ and ‘your husband’s being eaten by maggots’, I really think now that, as awful as they were, I think they were the making of me,” she admits.
“Because I realised then that I would never send that to somebody. And I feel like someone who is a nice person would never dream of sending that or saying that to another person.”
“People are just trying to hurt you, and that’s the way that they know how to do it, so I just take no notice now and just let it roll off my back. It’s shocking to say but you kind of get used to it.
“And I do understand to a certain extent people saying; ‘well, you put yourself out there so take the good with the bad’, and that’s fair enough. But some of the bad is so horrendous.”
“When Daniel was still alive, people would say; ‘you’re only lying. He’s not even sick. He doesn’t look sick. You’re faking this’. But how can you fake a terminal diagnosis? I can’t just hide him in the wardrobe… like he’s going to die.”
Rachel admits that she let some of the vile comments got to her when Daniel died, my heart breaks for her as she admits she stopped going to Daniel’s grave “for maybe six weeks”, after previously “living in the graveyard”. However, Rachel says one message in particular was so dark that they “took that away from me for a while.”
“And I’m raging I let them, but I just couldn’t get out of the head space of every time I went up and I was looking at the slate and the picture of him, I was thinking, ‘He doesn’t look like that now, he probably is being eaten by maggots’. And that was horrible.”
Thankfully, Rachel has found the strength to not let such spiteful messages have as much of an impact as they did before.
“I’m back now to being able to go up and it doesn’t affect me now, but at the time, it was really hurtful.”
“It doesn’t affect me now, but at the time, it was really hurtful”
How did Rachel continue to post alone, sharing her grief, while also trying to grow her brand? I ask her if she ever thought of just leaving her social media career behind her.
“Yes, I would say I was that close to deleting the whole thing,” she says as she pinches her fingers close together.
“The only thing that stopped me was the ‘OGs’, the people that [followed me] from the start”.
“Instagram feels like a family, and the trolling, it is such a small minuscule part.” Rachel adds that in her darkest days she had to “weigh up” the pros and cons of a life in the public eye, and she says “the fact that I can do everything with my girls” is what made her continue her coveted career path.
“I needed to become a little bit tougher, because I wear my heart on my sleeve and I’m very soft. But I feel like over the years I’m actually getting a lot tougher… I’m so glad that I came to my senses and that I came out the other side and I didn’t delete the whole thing.
Rachel’s experience of being trolled online made her understandably hesitant to share her new partner, Adrien Kiernan, on social media.
Last June, the influencer confirmed the happy news that after years of heartbreak, she had found love again. She announced the news by sharing a photo of their hands intertwined alongside the caption: “A New Chapter.”
While Rachel initially planned to not share photos of Adrien’s face, she eventually felt compelled to “reveal him” after people went to extraordinary lengths to find out who he was.
Speaking about going public with Adrien, Rachel says: “Everyone has an opinion. We all do. And some people really feel the need to voice their negative opinions. So initially I felt like I wasn’t going to share him online, and that’s what I had originally planned…”
“But we had been seeing each other for months before I came out and said it, and then we’d be out on dates and people would see us and they’d say’ is that your new boyfriend?’
“I didn’t want to feel like I was being disingenuous. So I just said, look, I’m going to just make announcement,” she explains.
“I didn’t want to feel like I was being disingenuous”
“I said to Adrien; ‘I won’t show you off’. Then we were getting braver and braver as more months were going on”.
Rachel explains the high level of eyes that were on the newfound couple at the time, with followers even sneaking photos of the pair while they were on nights away. ” You’d swear I was Beyoncé or the Queen or something,” she laughs.
“Then people found out who he was and they were like ‘why is there this big secrecy?’ A girl was sitting across from us when we were having dinner and she took a photograph, but she sent it to me. So she was supposed to send it to her friend and she said, ‘This is him, this is Rachel Gorry’s boyfriend’. And it just makes you a little bit paranoid.”
“I just thought to myself… if they’re going that much into finding out anything about what his name is, what he does, anything, I’ll just share a picture. It’s not a big deal. So then I did, but then the trolling came in like ‘you said you were keeping him private, and now you’re not’.
“You just can’t win. I’m like, it’s not a secret, you want to see him – here. And I’d be nosy as well,” she admits.
Thankfully the trolling Rachel faced over her new relationship was minuscule in comparison to all the lovely comments from people expressing how happy they were for her.
“I remember sharing the picture and I was so nervous, my anxiety was through the roof, but I had nothing [to be worried about]. When I put up that hand picture, the comments, it was actually outrageous. And it was so lovely to see, and I think that made me calm down and relax a bit,” she recalled.
“I was like, you know what? It’s okay. Now I’m at the point where I’m like, my family’s happy, his family’s happy, my girls are happy, Daniel’s family’s happy. Other than that family unit, if anyone else has a problem, it’s nothing to do with me.
“If you have an issue, that’s on you. But my inner circle, we’re all good. Like I’m happy again, and I think I’m the most content I’ve been in a very long time. And I know what it’s like to be at rock bottom, and I’m not going to apologise for feeling happy now.
“I know what it’s like to be at rock bottom, and I’m not going to apologise for feeling happy now”
“I never thought I’d be in this situation now. So I mean, if anyone has a problem with it, it’s unfortunately their problem.”
As someone who has followed Rachel since the beginning, it is so heartwarming to see how genuinely happy she is now, I can really see it in her eyes that she is in a good place.
Rachel beams when I ask her how she met Adrien, her little giggles and wide smile on her face are reminiscent of a teenage girl in love.
“We live in the same area, so I knew of him before. I knew him enough to say; ‘hey, how are you?’ But I didn’t know him. So we’d see him and I would just say hello.”
“And then we met one night, we were out and we bumped into each other and we were chatting and I was like, God he’s actually really nice. He’s really sound.”
“And then he was kind of messaging me, we were messaging back and forth, and then he finally plucked up the courage and asked me on a date. And then that date led to another date and another date…”
Rachel had previously confessed that she never saw herself dating again after losing Daniel, but she says her husband was adamant that he didn’t want her to be alone for the rest of her life.
While she struggled with the idea of “moving on” from her teenage sweetheart, Rachel eventually came around to the idea of putting herself back out there.
“I was coming into the stage where the loneliness was killing me, and I wanted a companion. The kids were in bed and I was sitting by myself in the evenings, and the years were passing and the loneliness was just… sometimes I’d just say, ‘I’d love a cuddle’.
“The loneliness was killing me…”
While Rachel warmed to the idea of finding someone to share her life with, she felt like she’d never properly love again – but that all changed when she met Adrien.
“When I was talking to Adrien, it was the first time when I was looking and I thought; ‘God, he’s actually really handsome’. He was the first one where, you know when you just get a little feeling? And I had that little feeling in my stomach, and I used to get nervous or feel butterflies when I used to see him.”
“So then when he started messaging me, it was like constant messaging all day long and then just really getting to know each other. And then he asked me on the date, and then it just went from date, date, date, date, date, and here we are now.”
Rachel stressed how important it was for her to meet someone who understood that Daniel would always remain a huge part of her life.
“Because I still love Daniel, and that must be very hard on him because I have so much love for him. I talk about him all the time,” she said.
“But he loves that and he embraces that and he brings him up to the girls and the girls will talk to him, or say if we’re out doing something as a family of five now, they’ll say ‘Oh, my daddy used to…’ and he just gets right in and there’s no awkwardness. And he loves that and he’ll come up to the grave, and I just think it’s so important.”
“I always say to him like my love for Daniel doesn’t take away the love that I have for him, and he understands that, and he knows it’s a separate thing. But he allows me to still grieve and love Daniel, and I have so much respect for that because I know it must be very difficult on him.
“I don’t think I could be with anyone that wouldn’t let me still love and grieve Daniel because it’s obviously so important to me and the girls and to keep his memory alive and celebrate all his birthdays and all the milestones we still celebrate.
“So I think I’m very lucky, and I do think it takes a special type of person, and he is a special type person.”
“He allows me to still grieve and love Daniel, and I have so much respect for that because I know it must be very difficult”
Rachel smiles with pure love as she speaks about how strong Adrien’s bond is with her daughters. She admits she was the most worried about her eldest Leah meeting her new man. “Leah is older [she’s 14], but they get on so well. And then I knew the smaller ones would just cling to him, they just love him.”
The mum-of-three admits it’s been nice to have male energy back in their home; “I think that’s what they were missing, it feels like we have that balance back and we’re all just so much happier and more content.”
“And I’m just so grateful for that, because I feel like when you know how bad things can be, when things are happy, you’re so much more grateful for them. I just think I’ve kind of just slowed down the pace of things and I appreciate the little things now.”
“Whereas before, it was always like go, go, go, go. But now I’m like, we’re just so lucky. It’s so nice to just be grateful for the little things.”
As we begin to wrap up Rachel’s photoshoot I can tell she’s a lot more at ease. Her mum is in the next room, and she’s just as sweet and caring as her daughter. I can tell her mum worries for her, but Rachel is in a great place and I hope her mum sees that too after all of the dark times she’s been through.
The theme for our shoot is ‘new year’, and Rachel says this is the first time in a “very, very long time” that she’s been “excited” for a new year ahead.
Rachel says she became so used to feeling “dread” at the start of a new year, but 2025 is gearing up to be one of her best years yet.
One of the most exciting things to come is a beauty launch she’s been working on for over a year, and teased us to “watch this space”.
“I love beauty. I’m like hair, tan, makeup, every day,” she said, as she told me she’s always been someone who has her hair, makeup, and tan done, as it makes her feel better in herself.
Rachel confirms that it will be a collaboration with a beauty brand instead of a stand-alone new business. She knows she would find it too difficult to run it all herself – something she experienced when she launched her fashion brand Alined, an anagram of her late husband’s name.
The Offaly influencer launched the brand online in 2022, selling a selection of stylish dresses which were quickly snapped up by her followers.
Rachel admits the experience was “really overwhelming”. “It was so hard, when I was doing it by myself.”
“I got a partner, we moved factory… and I was trying to do it all, trying to pack the orders, take the orders, and then do Instagram, I just couldn’t,” she confesses.
The aspiring entrepreneur put Alined on the back burner last year, but is now working on releasing a new collection again in 2025.
“We are working on it at the minute, I thought it would actually be launched by now. It’s just been madness… and you know yourself, it’s like delay, delay, delay. But yes, soon, please God.”
So what’s coming in 2025 on her channel? Rachel says she is itching to go back to her roots and return to posting interiors, showing tips and tricks for decorating your home as well as general interior styling.
“I have such a passion for doing up the house and my interiors, because the house we had before, we were trying to do it up really on the cheap, and I was like recycling all the furniture, and I love doing all that,” she says.
Given she already has her own fashion brand and she is about to venture into beauty, I ask Rachel if she’d ever consider launching her own homeware brand.
“Oh my God, that would be amazing. I have such a passion for homeware and I love it, and that will always be what I’ll go back to. So if the opportunity came, brilliant, like never say never, I’d jump at the chance,” she smiles.
While Rachel has big ambitions for 2025, she tells me that she doesn’t have an ultimate goal when it comes to her career.
“I have never even thought of it as a career. Because I feel like I just take it as, okay I can do this and I can work around the kids, and how lucky am I to be able to do that?” she admits.
“Because I always worried if I go back to a job and work 40 hours a week, who’s going to do the school run? And now…I can do that. I can do the school run, I can do the dinners, and homework and bedtimes. So to me, I’m living the dream now.
“I always say that ‘we could be gone tomorrow’, so I’m just living in the moment.”
“For now I feel like I’m living the dream and I have everything I need”
Whether she knows it or not, Rachel has built a really successful career already, and while that career has been solely focused opening up her life to the public, there is still a lot that people don’t know.
After everything she’s been through, I ask if she’d ever consider telling her story, in her own words, in a book or a documentary.
“Never say never,” she says. “There is an awful lot that people don’t know. People think they know everything, but that’s the tip of the iceberg.”
For now, Rachel is focusing on the present, and she says she is so grateful for all that she has, despite everything she has been through.
The 34-year-old tells me that she has found peace by living by her motto of “it could be worse”.
“That’s just what I always say, because it could be worse. And even the situation that we went through, I used to say that it could be worse because me and Daniel used to say it could be one of the kids that’s sick, how lucky are we?” she explained.
“Because obviously when you go in and you’re in the cancer ward and you’d see all the sick kids and we would look at each other and say, how lucky are we? You put it into perspective. So there’s always, always someone worse off than you. So that’s why I live by that.”
We’ve come to the end of what feels like a really honest and comfortable chat with Rachel and I ask her now what she’s hoping for the year ahead.
“As cliché as it sounds, health and happiness,” she smiles. “If I can end the year with the people that I started the year with, and that we all have a healthy year, then I’m winning.”
With a new love, she has a newfound excitement for her life and career, with such a loving energy for motherhood; it’s clear taking care of her three daughters is her highest priority.
As she leaves Goss HQ chatting and smiling with her mum, I can see the bright light that Rachel always brings with her as she goes through life.
I have no doubt Rachel’s 2025 will be everything that she hopes for, and I can honestly say there’s no one that deserves it more.
SHOOT CREDITS
Creative Director: Alexandra Ryan
Interview By: Kendra Becker
Photos & Video: Claire Boshell
Styling: Laura Mullett
Hair & Makeup: Jordan Reddy
STYLE CREDITS
