Rachel Riley

Rachel Annabelle Riley (born 11 January 1986) is a British television presenter.

She co-presents the Channel 4 daytime puzzle show Countdown and its comedy spin-off 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.

She is a mathematics graduate.

Her television debut came when she joined Countdown aged 22.

Riley's appointment to Countdown was announced at the same time as the announcement of a new main host, Jeff Stelling, replacing Des O'Connor; the duo of Stelling and Riley was in place for the new series beginning in January 2009.

Although she had no ambition to be a television presenter, she was encouraged to apply by her mother, and decided to do so because she was interested in the numbers part of the game.

Having beaten 1,000 applicants for the role, she commented, "There's only one cool maths job around and I was lucky enough to get it so I'm absolutely thrilled."

Riley is a keen supporter of Manchester United, like her father, who was originally from Salford; in October 2010, Riley presented a programme on the club's television channel MUTV which featured a tour of their Trafford Training Centre in Carrington.

She has also hosted episodes of An Audience with... on the channel.

Since it was first broadcast on 2 January 2012, Riley has also performed her Countdown role on the comedy crossover spin-off version, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, alongside comedian Jimmy Carr as host.

In August 2012, Riley married Jamie Gilbert, whom she had met while they were both studying at the University of Oxford.

In her appearance as a contestant on the BBC quiz show Celebrity Mastermind, broadcast on 4 January 2012, her specialist subject was a limited (13-year) history of the club; she eventually finished in joint-second place.

With an interest in popularising mathematics and the sciences, she has since co-presented The Gadget Show on Channel 5 (2013–14) and It's Not Rocket Science on ITV (2016).

She was also a contestant on the BBC celebrity dance show Strictly Come Dancing in 2013.

Riley was born in Rochford, Essex.

Her mother is Jewish, and she has stated that her "family came over in the pogroms" from Tsarist Russia.

Riley was raised in the Thorpe Bay area of Southend-on-Sea and was educated at the independent Thorpe Hall School, and Southend High School for Girls, a grammar school, where she obtained four As at A-Level, after which she earnt a second-class degree in applied maths at Oriel College, Oxford.

During a university holiday, Riley considered a career in the financial sector and completed an internship at Deutsche Bank in the City of London.

The experience put her off: she found the extreme behaviour of city traders wearing, and she disliked the early-morning train commute.

On Countdown, Riley replaced the long-serving Carol Vorderman.

Like Vorderman, Riley's role is to place tiles on the board for the letters and numbers rounds and to find a solution in the numbers rounds if the contestants are unable to do so.

From September 2013, Riley appeared in the eleventh series of the BBC One ballroom dancing programme Strictly Come Dancing with professional dancing partner and future husband Pasha Kovalev.

She was eliminated in week six of the show, on 3 November, after losing out in the dance-off against Abbey Clancy and Aljaž Škorjanec, who went on to win the series.

According to Riley, she lacked a natural talent for performing, so instead sought to frame each dance as that of a character.

For the first five weeks, Riley suffered from stage fright, commenting, "As soon as the music would start, I would have a fuzzy brain and it was like an out-of-body experience"; after seeing a cognitive behavioural therapist, she was able to control her breathing, and so was only able to truly enjoy the show for what proved to be her final appearance.

From 2013 to 2014, Riley co-presented on the Channel 5 programme The Gadget Show with Jason Bradbury.

She presented three series of the show and was later replaced by Amy Williams.

It was announced in November 2013 that they were separating.

The split has been cited as an example of the Strictly curse.

She began dating her Strictly dance partner, Pasha Kovalev, soon after the show ended in December 2013.

To mark her 1,000th episode of Countdown (aired on 25 June 2013), United player Ryan Giggs presented her with a signed team shirt, Giggs himself having celebrated his 1,000th game for the club the same year.

In 2016, Riley was part of the three-person presenting team for ITV's six-part series, It's Not Rocket Science, billed by the network as an entertainment series celebrating science.

In August 2016, it was announced that Riley had joined Sky Sports to present Friday Night Football alongside her former Countdown co-presenter Jeff Stelling, and Fantasy Football Club with Max Rushden and Paul Merson.

She left Friday Night Football in 2017.

In 2017, she was the co-winner with Idris Elba of the Rear of the Year award.

She and her husband became vegan in 2018.

She is an atheist who identifies as Jewish through her mother.

On 28 June 2019, Riley and Kovalev married in Las Vegas.

On 15 December 2019, Riley gave birth to a baby girl, the couple's first child.

On 5 November 2021, Riley gave birth to their second daughter.