Sports presenter Gabby Logan says she’s at a pivotal moment in her life after taking over as a main presenter on Match Of The Day as she opens up on some major personal changes
With decades of experience under her belt, you could argue that sports pundit Gabby Logan was already at the top of her game. But since becoming one of the main presenters of Match Of The Day , her career has reached new heights. It comes at a pivotal moment in the 52-year-old’s life, as Gabby tells us she’s coping with her children flying the nest and adjusting to the feeling of having more “me” time.
“I’ve definitely taken things on recently that I wouldn’t have done before – I’ve said yes to more things,” says the former gymnast, who has 20-year-old twins Reuben and Lois with her husband of 24 years, Kenny Logan. “That’s the thing with this period of life, you have a bit more flexibility. It’s balancing those things and seeing some of the positives that can come out of your kids growing up. You have more time to spend on yourselves. I feel like people, women particularly, don’t do self-care very well when their kids are young, because you haven’t got the time.
“That’s a benefit I’m finding. I would probably not have worked as much on weekends when they were younger. You know, I did consider that quite a lot with things that I was offered to do, before. And now I’ve got more flexibility to do what I want to do, so it’s… strange,” admits Gabby.
READ MORE: Money-saving deal slashes price of ‘luxurious’ watch worth £465 down to £41
Following in their parents’ sports-loving footsteps, Reuben is a professional Rugby Union player for Northampton Saints, and Lois is a show jumper, while studying at university. And Gabby says the empty nest is still taking some time to get her head around.
“It is a challenge. You love their company and want to do things with them. You really miss them as people more than anything. And the house feels quieter. But then the pros are that the house has less washing,” she laughs.
“Luckily, they did it quite gradually because although Reuben moved out over two years ago, he was closer to home so he’d come to visit most weekends. Lois was having a year off back then, so it wasn’t a big double whammy where they both left on the same day.
“But now, Reuben has moved up north and he’s definitely not going to be able to get home as much, and Lois will be back at university. So I think this term will be a lot harder in terms of the empty house.”
While Gabby and former rugby star Kenny’s lives sound uber-exciting to sport fans, she says her grown-up kids aren’t quite as impressed.
“They don’t really know any different than what we do, and I don’t think any children think their parents are cool. But they’re sporty, so they enjoy the sporting events we get to go to and are really supportive. Well, I think they’re secretly supportive,” she admits.
“We’ve always been quite an open family, so they aren’t afraid to bring things up when they think we’ve crossed the line on TV or in interviews,” Gabby adds, as we bring up her son’s recent revelation that he was “embarrassed” to hear his mum chatting about sex on a podcast.
Embarrassing as it may have been, Reuben spoke highly of his famous parents, and has clearly had some strong role models to look up to.
“I wouldn’t be the person to tell you what the secret is, if there is a secret to marriage,” says Gabby, who met her husband on a night out in 1999. “You do need to enjoy each other’s company, and having respect and fun and being a team has always been integral to our relationship. Sometimes, you have to ride through tough times and times that are more challenging, but that can then make it better on the other side. It’s about having a bit of resilience at times. The bad times are as important as the good times.”
The family have certainly had their fair share of tough times, with Kenny battling prostate cancer in 2022 which, thankfully, he got the all-clear from a year later. Not one to sugarcoat the difficult journey, Gabby says the heartache of Kenny’s health battle has brought the family closer.
“Families go through all kinds of challenges, whether it’s bereavement or cancer or other illnesses – and you somehow come out of those situations with the armoury to get stronger. You learn how to deal with those stressful times and adopt that, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ approach. You have a level of strength that comes from that pain,” she says, quietly.
Alongside mental strength, Gabby has been focusing on her physical health over the last few years and tells us she has got into strength training.
“Training, for me, has been a game changer recently, especially in this period of my life,” says Gabby, who has openly spoken about her journey with perimenopause in recent years. “I was doing a lot of Pilates and walking until about six months ago. I started training with an online programme and have been building muscle rather than just maintaining. I really enjoy it. I find that any kind of exercise helps with my mental health, as well as physical.”
Gabby has found that her new routine helps her deal with her menopause symptoms, something which has led her to work with Menopace on its Strength Test campaign.
“Things started to change for me a bit in my forties,” says Gabby, when we ask about her menopause journey. “I didn’t really understand what perimenopause was. I’d never heard it before and then it was creeping into conversations quite a lot. Then I noticed changes that were quite gradual. It wasn’t anything overnight where I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is it.’ It was more small things like having lower moods, or my hair feeling more brittle, or doing an exercise and not seeing the results I would usually see.”
Aiming to help women in midlife to maintain their strength, vitality and happiness while balancing often wildly fluctuating hormones, Gabby has been taking part in the Strength Test, something she reckons every woman going through these changes should try.
“It’s a mix of simple things that people can measure themselves against and work out what they need to do, you know, to get better at them. Things like, ‘I can’t hang as long as I thought I could’, or ‘I need to be able to lift a bit more weight on this exercise to get to the strength level that I should have at this age’. So, yeah, they are tests people can use to make sure they’re hitting those benchmarks that they should at this age.”
And Gabby won’t be winding down anytime soon. “I’m the Mary Berry of sports broadcasting, to be honest,” she says. “I’ve got lots going on at the moment, so there are no plans to slow down.”
Gabby Logan is an ambassador for Menopace, and she has launched the Menopace Strength Test to help women assess and improve their physical strength. Gabby takes Menopace Max RRP £25.95 available at Vitabiotics.com.
