Coleen Mary Rooney ( McLoughlin; born 3 April 1986) is the wife of former English footballer
Wayne Rooney
Wayne Mark Rooney (born 24 October 1985) is an English professional football manager and former player, who is the manager of Major League Soccer club D.C. United in the United States. He spent much of his playing career as a forward while a ...
. She is also a former television personality.
Early life and family
Coleen Mary McLoughlin was born in
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...
,
Merseyside
Merseyside ( ) is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in North West England, with a population of 1.38 million. It encompasses both banks of the Mersey Estuary and comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wirra ...
, to Tony and Colette McLoughlin. Tony McLoughlin, who was a
bricklayer
A bricklayer, which is related to but different from a mason, is a craftsman and tradesman who lays bricks to construct brickwork. The terms also refer to personnel who use blocks to construct blockwork walls and other forms of masonry ...
, also ran a boxing club. The McLoughlins are of Irish descent. Coleen is the eldest of four children; her sister Rosie, who had
Rett syndrome
Rett syndrome (RTT) is a genetic disorder that typically becomes apparent after 6–18 months of age and almost exclusively in females. Symptoms include impairments in language and coordination, and repetitive movements. Those affected often h ...
, died on 5 January 2013 at the age of 14.
Coleen Rooney attended
St John Bosco Arts College
St John Bosco Arts College is a Roman Catholic comprehensive secondary school for girls in Croxteth, Liverpool.
Admissions
The school caters for girls between the ages of 11 and 19 and the number of girls on roll is 900. 35% of the girls receive ...
and left school with 10
GCSEs
The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a particular subject, taken in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. State schools in Scotland use the Scottish Qualifications Certificate instead. Private s ...
, including an A* for
Performing Arts
The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perform ...
.
Career
Rooney wrote a column for celebrity magazine '' Closer'' entitled "Welcome to My World". She left ''Closer'' in 2008 to write a weekly fashion and news column for ''
OK!
''OK!'' is a British weekly magazine that primarily specialises in royal and celebrity news. Originally launched as a monthly magazine, its first issue was published in April 1997. In September 2004, ''OK''! launched in Australia as a monthly ...
'' magazine. Rooney began presenting when in May 2006, she assisted Sir
Trevor McDonald
Sir Trevor McDonald (born George McDonald; 16 August 1939) is a Trinidadian-British newsreader and journalist, best known for his career as a news presenter with ITN.
McDonald was knighted in 1999 for his services to journalism.
Career E ...
on his show ''
Tonight with Trevor McDonald
''Tonight'' (often referred to as ''The Tonight Programme'') is a British current affairs programme, produced by ITV Studios (formerly Granada Television) and ITN for the ITV network, replacing the long-running investigative series ''World in ...
'' in a programme about the
genetic disorder
A genetic disorder is a health problem caused by one or more abnormalities in the genome. It can be caused by a mutation in a single gene (monogenic) or multiple genes (polygenic) or by a chromosomal abnormality. Although polygenic disorders ...
Rett syndrome, from which her younger sister suffered. She went on to make her own series for ITV called ''Coleen's Real Women'' in which she was labelled as "The nation's favourite
girl next door
The girl next door is a young female stock character who is often used in romantic stories. She is so named because she often lives next door to the protagonist or is a childhood friend. They start out with a mutual friendship that later often ...
" and looked for "real women" to front
advertising campaign
An advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication (IMC). An IMC is a platform in which a group of people can group their ideas, beliefs, and conce ...
s as an alternative to models.
In December 2005, Rooney sold an exercise
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...
entitled ''Coleen McLoughlin's Brand New Body Workout'', which became a bestseller in the United Kingdom. She was paid £3 million to front the George at Asda campaign. In June 2010, Rooney struck a deal with retail and gambling company
Littlewoods
Littlewoods was a retail and football betting company founded in Liverpool, England, by John Moores in 1923. By the 1980s, it had grown to become the largest private company in Europe, but subsequently declined in the face of increased com ...
. Rooney's autobiography, ''Welcome to My World'', was released in March 2007. This was followed by ''Coleen's Real Style'' the following year, published by
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...
. She has also published a four-book series called ''Coleen Style Queen'' from 2008 to 2010.
Personal life
Marriage and children
She met her future husband,
Wayne Rooney
Wayne Mark Rooney (born 24 October 1985) is an English professional football manager and former player, who is the manager of Major League Soccer club D.C. United in the United States. He spent much of his playing career as a forward while a ...
, at age 12 in the Liverpool suburb of
Croxteth
Croxteth is a suburb of Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and a Liverpool City Council Ward. Although housing in the area is predominantly modern, the suburb has some notable history. At the United Kingdom 2011 Census it had a population of 14,561. ...
. They began a relationship when they were 16, after they left secondary school. Wayne's mother Jeanette worked as a part-time cleaner at
St John Bosco Arts College
St John Bosco Arts College is a Roman Catholic comprehensive secondary school for girls in Croxteth, Liverpool.
Admissions
The school caters for girls between the ages of 11 and 19 and the number of girls on roll is 900. 35% of the girls receive ...
, which Coleen attended.
The couple married in
Portofino
Portofino (; ) is a '' comune'' located in the Metropolitan City of Genoa on the Italian Riviera. The town is clustered around its small harbour, and is known for the colourfully painted buildings that line the shore. Since the late 19th century ...
, Italy on 12 June 2008; Britain's ''
OK!
''OK!'' is a British weekly magazine that primarily specialises in royal and celebrity news. Originally launched as a monthly magazine, its first issue was published in April 1997. In September 2004, ''OK''! launched in Australia as a monthly ...
'' magazine paid them a reported £2.5 million for exclusive wedding information and pictures. The newlyweds, dubbed Wayleen, moved into a new £1.3m mansion in
Formby
Formby is a town and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, Merseyside, England, which had a population of 22,419 at the 2011 Census.
Historically in Lancashire, three manors are recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 under " ...
. They currently live in
Prestbury, Cheshire
Prestbury is a village and civil parish in Cheshire, England, about 1.5 miles (3 km) north of Macclesfield. At the 2001 census, it had a population of 3,324;Alder Hey Children's Charity.
Rebekah Vardy dispute
On 9 October 2019, Rooney made a
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, an ...
post explaining that posts from her private
Instagram
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can be ...
account were being leaked to '' The Sun'' newspaper. She stated that to discover who was selling the stories, she had restricted access to the posts. She revealed that the only viewer of these posts was an account belonging to
Rebekah Vardy
Rebekah Vardy (''née'' Miranda, previously Nicholson; born 17 February 1982) is an English media personality married to the English football player Jamie Vardy. She was a contestant on '' I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!'' in 2017 and on ...
implying that she was the culprit. The ensuing scandal was dubbed 'Wagatha Christie', a
portmanteau
A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsWAG and mystery writer
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictiona ...
, by the British media.
Vardy responded on her own Twitter account, denying the claims and claiming that her Instagram account had been hacked.
In June 2020, news broke that Vardy was taking Rooney to court for defamation, with legal costs reportedly set to hit £500,000 on each side.
On 20 November 2020, Justice Warby ruled in favour of Vardy after the libel preliminary hearing at the High Court in London which took place on 19 November 2020. Neither Rooney nor Vardy were at the court in person. Rooney was ordered to pay Vardy almost £23,000 in court costs. The pair were given until 8 February 2021 to make an attempt to mediate their case.
In May 2022, Vardy sued Rooney for libel, arguing that the accusation over her Instagram account was false. Following the earlier ruling, it became Rooney’s responsibility to prove Vardy was personally responsible for leaking stories to ''The Sun'', or convince the judge that publication of the allegation was in the public interest.
On 29 July 2022, the judge in the case, Mrs Justice Steyn, dismissed Mrs Vardy's claim, ruling that Mrs Rooney's accusation was "substantially true".