Keeley Donovan


Keeley Emma Donovan is an English journalist and broadcaster, currently working for the BBC as a weather presenter for television and radio stations in the North of England.

Early life

Donovan was born in Grimsby and grew up in nearby Tetney. Her father, Terry Donovan, was from Liverpool and played professional football for Rotherham United and the Republic of Ireland. Her late Irish grandfather, Don Donovan, played for both Grimsby Town and the Republic of Ireland. He managed Boston United from 1965 to 1969. She has a younger sister, Kirsty.
She attended the Humberston School. She did a course in media at Franklin Sixth Form College in Grimsby, then studied for a BA at De Montfort University in Leicester. She returned to Grimsby to do a post-graduate NVQ Diploma in Broadcast Journalism at Grimsby Institute of Further & Higher Education in conjunction with East Coast Media.

Career

Donovan started her broadcasting career at the age of 14, presenting for Channel 7 Television, a local cable TV station based in Immingham. She went freelance while continuing her studies and began freelancing for BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in 2005 and joined the locally-based Propeller TV a year later.
After studying broadcast meteorology with the Met Office and the BBC Weather Centre, Donovan started presenting weather forecasts for the BBC's regional TV and local radio services in the Yorkshire and North Midlands, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and North East and Cumbria regions. She is also a reporter for the regional current affairs magazine, Inside Out, and an occasional newsreader and reporter for the Leeds edition of BBC Look North.
In September 2015, she co-presented her first networked TV series, the daytime factual show Break-in Britain, produced by BBC Cymru Wales.
In March 2016, it was announced that Keeley would co-present the new BBC series Countryfile Diaries, a spin off of the popular Countryfile programme.

Personal life

In July 2017, Donovan announced her engagement to fellow BBC presenter Johnny I'Anson, he proposed to Donovan during a romantic walk in the Lake District. They were married on 25 June 2018 in a rustic wedding at Castle Farm near Knaresborough. BBC Look North colleague Harry Gration conducted the ceremony.
Keeley and husband Johnny's first child was born in July 2020.