‘I was only 13 but I said to myself: I’m going to marry him’ – Altan’s Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh on her great love affair with late husband, Frankie

“There was something magical and magnetic about him.”

Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh has a new album out with Altan. Photo: James Connolly

Dónal Lynch

Sometimes ghosts are summoned through a song, and sometimes they come unbidden in other ways. When Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh received her Eircode a few years ago the digits startled her. They were F94K. It seemed like a sign from the beyond. Mairéad’s late husband, the love of her life, and the man with whom she became a star of traditional music, was Frankie Kennedy. He died in 1994.

“It was kind of amazing and also a bit spooky,” she says. “I always feel his energy all around me, minding me. He is not here on this earth. But he is with me still.”