Jon Kay has been at the helm of BBC Breakfast for a few years after replacing longtime presenter Dan Walker. But who is Jon married to, and how did they meet?
BBC Breakfast presenter Jon Kay wakes up at the crack of dawn to host the well-loved flagship news programme during weekdays alongside Sally Nugent. While he spends most of his time on screen interviewing politicians and famous faces, he’s also a married father-of-three who met his wife, Francesca Kasteliz, at work in the 1990s.
Jon and Francesca met while working at BBC Bristol in 1998 when they were both journalists. Similar to Jon, Franscesca started out as a trainee news reporter before moving to local TV and radio.
She rose to the rank of TV & Radio News Correspondent at BBC National Network News in 1999 before securing a role as an Assistant News Editor at BBC News.
Francesca has a lot to be proud of, too, as she has various awards, including a Royal Television Society Award for Best News Item while she was at BBC News.
However, her time as a journalist ended several years later, in 2006, when she decided to have a career shake-up and become a Senior Coach and Trainer at the BBC Academy before being employed as an internal coach for the corporation.
She’s active on Twitter and posted a throwback snap from her time reporting for the BBC in light of her followers. In it, she was seen standing outside the Conservative Party’s Central Office wearing a lilac-coloured shirt paired with a black jacket. Her hair was short, light brown and voluminous and swept to the left side of her face.
The former broadcaster captioned the post: “My son found this old footage on the internet and howled with laughter. Mainly at my hairstyle I think. Well, it was 1999.”
Francesca now works as a TV presenter coach at TV Coach Limited. She offers performance coaching for on-air talent to help clients working for places such as Channel 4, the BBC and CBBC.
On her website, she wrote: “My particular passion is helping women and young people find their voice on-air and in the TV industry.”
Away from work, she and her husband Jon have three children and an adorable 14-year-old cocker spaniel.
Francesca recently spoke on Maria Andreas Newman’s podcast, What the Mum, about raising her children, telling listeners: “I think there’s a lot about how we’re brought up as children. This makes me really question how I bring up my—I’ve got two boys and a girl, so I’m always thinking about how I’m treating them, and I don’t want to treat them differently.”
She added: “I’m trying to give them the same values. There’s a lot about society’s pressure on women. This label about being bossy if we speak up. That still exists, but I think it’s getting better.”
The couple and their children reside in Bristol, with Jon often sharing updates about his career and personal life with his Instagram followers.
