Carol Kirkwood says Breakfast presenters can now file her old 2:45am starts under the past. In April, the 64-year-old called time on 28 years as a weather presenter and says retirement has already taken on a new routine with Steve Randall.
“I’m living the dream,” she said of life after Weather and Breakfast. She added: “I loved being a weather presenter. I loved my job, and it was my choice to leave, because I love my husband more, and we want to do things together.”
April leaves room for travel
In April, Kirkwood stepped away from the job she had held for 28 years, mostly on Breakfast. The shift is practical as much as personal: she said she is no longer getting up at 2:45am for work and now has free weekday evenings for the first time in many years, a change that turns retirement into usable time rather than a symbolic exit.
She and Steve Randall have already started travelling. That makes the change feel less like a pause and more like a reallocation of time, with the schedule now built around the two of them instead of the early-morning demands of live television.
Steve Randall and the choice
“It’s brilliant, I’m really, really enjoying it,” Kirkwood said, and she also described retirement as busy in a way that surprised her. That is the real trade-off here: she says she loves the freedom, but she also misses her colleagues on Weather and Breakfast, and still keeps in touch with them.
She did not walk away because she had fallen out with the job. “I miss my job to a point, but I have so much freedom now, and I’m living to my timetable and my schedule rather than anybody else’s – that’s liberating,” she said. For readers watching a long-serving presenter leave on her own terms, that is the clearest sign this was planned, not forced.
Breakfast in April
Kirkwood also said, “I’ll never not look at the weather – it’s a part of my DNA.” That line explains why her exit still feels unfinished in a small way: the routine has changed, but the habit has not.
Both she and Steve Randall had comprehensive Bupa health assessments before retirement, and the couple’s next chapter is already underway through travel. The unresolved part is simpler than a career question: what she does after the trips will define whether retirement settles into leisure or becomes something even busier.
