Heart on her sleeve

From an immigrant child from humble beginnings to a well-known TV presenter: the path of Panagiota Petridou was not always straightforward, but it was always purposeful.

Panagiota Petridou, the daughter of Greek immigrants in Germany, learned early on how to make herself heard. Her parents ran a restaurant that was open every day of the week. “There was never any time for someone to do a puzzle with me, read me a story or take me on trips,” Petridou recalls of her childhood. So the spot behind the bar became her first stage: “If you want to be noticed, you have to have something to offer,” she remembers. She became louder, funnier, quicker-witted – and developed a feel for the people around her. “I love to perform. I enjoy entertaining people. It made me feel good as a child and that hasn’t changed to this day.” Many threads of her life lead back to the very place where it all began – with the desire to be seen. What she often missed was shared time and closeness – and yet it was precisely from that absence that a strength was born: independence and self-confidence.

One scene has been particularly etched into her emotional memory. At a wedding, hungry and shy, she hesitated as a little girl to get food for herself. Her mother did not do it for her, but instead urged her firmly: be brave and do it on your own. “That shaped me. If you don’t say what you want, you will never get what you need.” This clarity, combined with the heart that the 46-year-old wears on her sleeve, became her trademark: “I’m good at eating the last chocolate,” she says with a smile today.

New paths – In her younger years, she had to give up her dream of studying acting – on the advice of her older brother, after her father passed away and financial security became the family’s priority. Instead of the stage, she turned her focus to training as a wholesale and foreign trade merchant. Instead of applause, it was cars. She fell into the industry almost by chance, but there too she developed a particular talent for listening to customers, reading their body language and recognising their needs. The results proved her right: from 2007 to 2009, she topped the rankings of the best MINI salespeople in Germany.

The leap into television happened almost by chance – and yet it felt like a homecoming. Suddenly it was all back: the stage, the audience, undivided attention. Formats such as “Biete Rostlaube, suche Traumauto” brought her to a wide audience, and she fronted the VOX show for eleven years. Until last year, she was still selling cars in parallel. “In the car dealership, some people naturally recognised me and cheekily asked whether the money in German television wasn’t enough. ‘It is,’ I told them, ‘but I’m greedy,’” she laughs.

Turning point – Perhaps the biggest turning point in her life came in 2022: the birth of her child. “There is a life before and a life after,” she says, putting the experience into very particular words. The after was and continues to be defined by an intensity she had never known before, she freely admits. The independent, impulsive go-getter discovered an entirely new side of herself – a more mindful, gentler, more sensitive version: “It’s as if your heart suddenly starts running around outside your body.” With a wry addition: “Before that, I was, of course, also the best educator of other people’s children.”

What matters most to her today as a mother, above all else, is spending time together – including with her own mum. Being present. Living closeness. All things she had missed time and again as a child. Weekends are consciously filled with variety: lots of outings, shared experiences and trips are on the agenda. She had already spent her summer holidays in Greece as a child, a tradition she has kept up. In the evenings, she tells bedtime stories that tend to be exceptionally vivid – with words, gestures and sound effects. So much so that her four-and-a-half-year-old, whom she affectionately calls “Mini Cooper”, prefers “Mama’s show” to books being read aloud. To describe the joys and demands that motherhood brings her, she reaches for vocabulary from her professional world: “My child is the best car. I once told my boss: selling a thousand cars a year is roughly the equivalent of what you put in for a two-year-old child.”

Being brave – She wants to pass on to her child what has made her strong: the courage to speak up about what you need. “I encourage my child to stand up for themselves,” she says. In doing so, the former handball player – who played for 22 years up to the 3rd Bundesliga – stays true to her principles without wavering. She still breastfeeds occasionally, out of conviction and against all the critical opinions from outside. “Honestly: what others say about that doesn’t interest me.” She consciously wants to keep her family life as far from the public eye as possible and live in a way that feels right.

Because everyday life is already more than full, with time tightly scheduled. She is currently giving talks on sales across Germany, performing on the comedy stage with her live programme “Was letztes Preis?” and hosting the podcast “Die Harte & der Zarte” with Serdar Karibik every Wednesday on Podimo. Between career, family and her own ambitions, there is not much space for breaks. Panagiota Petridou draws her energy from exactly the things that have always sustained her: movement, human connection, life itself. “You can really run the stress off your soul.” Her relationship also needs to find its place – not something that happens on its own, as she openly admits, “but we are a fantastic team of three.” And all the more important are shared decisions, such as her husband’s one-and-a-half-year parental leave, which opened up new perspectives for them as a family. How to not just survive crises but transform them into something positive is something she recounts in her book “Das Scheiße-Gold-Prinzip”. From immigrant child to television star was, in hindsight, almost a logical path. What helped along the way: fight, fight, fight – but with charm. And today? “I now get to be a child again myself, together with my child. That is the greatest gift I have ever given myself.”