She reaches the heights of stardom in the 60s and 70s. Until the age of 42, she lived a life like in a fairy tale. However, one single tragic event turned her life upside down changing it forever. The moment her teenage daughter died in a car crash made her realise the vanity of the worldly things leading her down a path of deep faith and ultimately the life of a nun.
The eldest child of six, Mary Alexopoulou grew up in Peristeri, Athens. Her father, then a Bishop at the Metropolis of Peristeri, did not want his daughter to follow a career in music and entertainment. Eventually, her father was swayed when musician friends of her grandfather convinced him of her singing talent. She was allowed to follow them and be part of a music orchestra at Ekali’s “Village Tavern”.
She gradually grew in popularity and fame releasing her first LP. “I made a hit song composed by composer Nikos Katsaros at the music festival in Malta. I was awarded the first prize there again. Nevertheless, all of my love songs were devoted to God, I was trying to get to heaven through the projector. I loved him so much”, she revealed in an interview.
She collaborated with all the big names and appeared at the top venues of the era. “Old Athens”, “Castle”, “Rock”, “Dellina” and “Stars”, were some of the venues she appears at, while she collaborated with artists such as Poulopoulos, Vogiatzis, F. Nikolaou, Robert Williams, Bessi Argyrakis, Metaxopoulos, Katsosaros and many more. But he would do her job and leave the venue she was appearing in because she loved peace and quiet. She never smoked and didn’t like alcohol at all.
When she married she left the life of a singer behind. She had two daughters, Constantina and Eleftheria. Life, however, played a cruel game on her, as it often does, when people are at their happiest moments.
“In 1984, my Constantina was 18 years old, just before she left to study Political Science abroad. One morning she took her car from our house to go to a shop in Kifissia. At the turn off Agia Marina at Koropi a frontal collision with a truck occurred. Her death was instantaneous. I was gazing into nothing, in front of me. I was jumping up and down on the couch. Then I went out to our terrace and raindrops started falling from a cloud. Really heavy, you can’t imagine. And at that moment I turned to God: ‘My God, are you crying with me?'” Mary Alexopoulou told Espresso.
From then on, she started doing to church constantly to cope with her loss. Two years later, she decided to go to an elder Monk and decided to become a nun.
In 1992, she set up her quiet spiritual retreat, Panagia Theonimfi, in her old home in Koropi. So many years later, she has completely left the secular world. She does not watch television and is informed about what is going on in the world by the faithful who visit the monastery on Sundays to worship.
