No tears. No backward glances. When the end finally came the Byrne family just smiled and issued a collective sigh of relief.
For Mr Byrne, the consummate professional, relief stemmed from the satisfaction of another job well done. On a rain-sodden, blustery Christmas Eve morning, he had broadcast his last Gay Byrne Show for RTE Radio and the predictable annual proceedings went off without a hitch.
His wife had watched most of it from the street, one of thousands who descended on the north side of St Stephen's Green. Kathleen Watkins was touched by the emotional public reaction to her husband retiring from the show after 26 years, but declared herself "delira and excira" that this was to be the last.
Standing beside her, daughter Suzy marvelled at one woman who approached them with tears in her eyes and said that without Gay's voice in the morning her life was over. Her own feelings couldn't have contrasted more.
"It will be great . . . Dad will have more free time and can come and see me in London where I work and spoil me rotten," she joked later.
Byrne's elder daughter, Crona, spent the morning helping on the show giving out pens and selection boxes to the crowd. She smiled as Dad, in tweed cap and swish cravat, tottered from screaming fan to screaming fan.
It was the end of an era, she agreed. But he had led such a busy life, at 64 it was time he took a step back.
The family were teaching him to do the housework and "how to spend money", she laughed.
If his final send-off - he was dragged from the stage by two "jobsworth guards" aka D'Unbelievables - was pure show business, his own verdict on the significance of his departure was subdued.
No, no, no he wasn't emotional, he had been too busy coping with the rain and the interruptions and so on. He knew that the show had been a window on the world for two generations. "They tell me `we grew up with you' and they did," he said.
Kathleen Watkins gave her husband a huge hug as she walked into the room in the Shelbourne Hotel where post-show drinks had been arranged. "I'm absolutely delighted, it's a terrific day," she said. "I'm looking forward to next year when, if the Lord spares us, we will all be free."
Gay Byrne chatted to friends and smoked a cigarette. Kathleen posed with him for photographs and playfully called him "Gabsy darling".
"Don't be so familiar," scolded her husband with a twinkle in his eye.
What do you think of this guy, an RTE reporter asked a group of middle-aged women that had materialised in the hotel foyer earlier. "We just love him," one explained. But Gaybo tut-tutted and said we had had enough of that old nonsense. One woman pressed on, producing an autograph book which the broadcaster had signed for her in 1964 at the Seventeen Club.
"My God, I remember the Seventeen Club," said Gay adding the morning's first hint of nostalgia.
But the moment soon passed. For the Byrne family it was a day to look straight ahead.