Supermodel Kathy's slow walk to faith

Former glamour model Kathy Ireland’s story reads like a Hollywood script. But its turning point came not under studio lights, but in a quiet Paris apartment with a hidden Bible.

Now aged 63 and living in Santa Barbara, California, with her husband of 38 years, Greg Olsen, and their three children, the former supermodel turned business mogul speaks openly about the Christian faith that transformed her life decades ago.

Ireland’s rise to fame in the 1980s and ’90s was meteoric.

With 13 consecutive appearances in Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues and three cover shoots, she became one of the most recognisable faces in the world.

Yet behind the glamour, she has said she grew up with “really no faith” and little sense of spiritual direction.

That changed in 1981 when, aged just 18, she travelled to Paris to pursue modelling.

Feeling isolated and unsafe, she discovered a Bible her mother, a new Christian, had quietly packed in her suitcase.

One night, she opened it – and everything shifted.

“It was late at night… I opened the Bible,” she recalled. “I knew that what I had in my hands was true.”

Reading from the Gospel of Matthew, Ireland said she encountered Jesus in a way that shattered her assumptions.

“Jesus was nothing like I thought,” she said – a moment she now describes as a genuine spiritual awakening.

That encounter did not instantly make life easy.

Ireland has described herself as a “slow learner”, admitting it took until her mid-40s to read the entire Bible.

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