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Michelle Rocca

Irish socialite

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ372148 ↗
Source-derived summary

Michelle Mary Teresa Rocca (born 1961) is an Irish TV presenter, former model and beauty pageant titleholder who won Miss Ireland 1980. The following year, she married footballer John Devine. Two years after their divorce in 1990 she met and later married, Northern Irish singer Van Morrison.

Career

Rocca grew up in a large family with two brothers and three sisters. Rocca attended University College Dublin studying Greek and Roman Civilization, as well as Italian and French Archaeology. She is fluent in several languages and has earned an MA degree from Trinity College in Dublin and also a degree from Bristol University.

She was named Miss Ireland in 1980 and was the number 3 finalist in the Miss International 1981 pageant. She worked in the family business and also modeled until she joined RTÉ in 1987 as a television presenter. In 1988, she co-hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 1988 with Pat Kenny in front of a worldwide audience of 600 million viewers. She continued to model, with occasional presenting jobs, such as the Miss World 1990 contest in London.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Michelle Rocca” as irish socialite. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1961, 1980, 1990, 1981—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1961-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Michelle, Rocca and Irish can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as irish socialite. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q372148. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1961, 1980, 1990 and 1981.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Michelle Rocca”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Michelle Rocca primary sources, Michelle Rocca archive and Michelle research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Michelle Rocca”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Michelle Rocca” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.