Losing my virginity was a powerful moment in my life: Osher Günsberg

Osher Günsberg is known for hosting reality TV shows including Australian Idol and The Bachelor. But his private life has been anything but roses, as the 51-year-old reveals about his battle with drinking and the end of his first marriage. Still, he managed to find love through a chance encounter with his second wife, Audrey. Here, he discusses the important women in his life.

Of my two grandmothers, my maternal grandmother, Aldona, a doctor, was the one I looked up to the most. She was an amazing person. She was the one, along with my grandfather, Jonas, who brought my mother, Birute, from Lithuania to Adelaide, when Mum was eight.

My grandparents lived on a farm in Kaunas. They could see what was happening with the Nazis, so my grandmother talked to Jewish parents in the town about their daughters working on their farm. She had a deal with a train driver who would stop between stations. The girls would hop over my grandmother’s back fence and into the arms of people who could smuggle them out. She saved around eight kids. She was extraordinary.

My mother was very practical. She was a doctor and eminently intelligent. Mum was of that generation where she could do everything from making a dress to growing the food we needed.

I was 11 when my dad Michael, who was also a doctor, moved out. Mum became a single mum to my three brothers and me. She worked hard and sacrificed so much for us, as she wanted to give us a life free from hardship. Mum died in 2017. I am pragmatic and practical like her.

As a teenager, I wasn’t confident at all around girls. I’d attended an all-boys school where the only woman in my life apart from Mum was my accounting teacher. Anything I thought I knew about girls came from watching ’80s teen movies.

I went out with a girl in year 9, but my first girlfriend happened in year 12. We met on the bus route home. She had moved to Brisbane from America. We went out for six months. There’s something to be said about how you feel about the person you lose your virginity to: it’s a powerful moment in your life. I was sad at how it ended, which was my fault. She worked at one of the first Subways in Australia and to this day, every time I walk past one of the shops and smell that bread, that’s the smell of me losing my virginity.

I lasted six weeks studying commerce at university – it was too hard. I then went to TAFE and studied contemporary music. When I got into FM radio in Brisbane, I met Cymone. I was 21 and when we moved from Brisbane to Adelaide to Sydney together.