Springdale woman named Miss Smiling Irish Eyes for Pittsburgh

A Springdale High School graduate is Pittsburgh’s Miss Smiling Irish Eyes for 2024.

Madalyn Byrnes, 21, of Springdale will be featured in the March 16 St. Patrick’s Day parade, which starts at 10 a.m.

“I was overjoyed,” Byrnes said. “This has been something I have been working toward for a long time.

“To be named Miss Smiling Irish Eyes and be grouped with those amazing girls and women before me, it’s a real honor. It means a lot.”

According to the Miss Smiling Irish Eyes website, a committee in Pittsburgh has crowned a young woman with the title for the past 60 years.

The winners — each year two others also are named as “maidens” to accompany the winner — will appear in several events in the week leading up to the parade.

“Miss Smiling Irish Eyes and her court are tasked with demonstrating how the cornerstones of Irish identity — faith, unity and Christian charity — inform their lives and their future goals,” the website states.

Byrnes’ family is deeply involved with Pittsburgh’s Irish heritage. She is a member of the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians Division No. 23. She said her family has always celebrated their heritage.

“It’s a part of who I am and who my family is. It’s something I’d hate to let go of and not acknowledge in my life,” she said.

Byrnes’ volunteerism also reaches outside the Irish community. She is a junior at Robert Morris University, where she’s involved with the Coalition of Christian Outreach.

Byrnes also volunteers at the Fun and Freedom Day Camp, a Christian athletic day camp in the Springdale area. She graduated from Springdale High School in 2021 and earned the Springdale Future Hall of Famer award for her volunteerism in the community.

Byrnes said volunteering and giving back was a trait instilled in her by her parents, Gary and Regina Byrnes.

“I just like to find ways to give back,” she said. “When you do it with people you enjoy spending time with, it’s not a task at all.”

Pittsburgh’s Miss Smiling Irish Eyes Committee said in a statement that Byrnes “has been an outstanding example of Pittsburgh’s next generation, carrying on the legacy and rich traditions of her proud Irish heritage.”

“With Irish genes from both her maternal and paternal ancestors, she states that the ‘Irish way is in her DNA.’ Madalyn exemplifies that perspective with her strong commitment to her family, her education and her community,” the committee said in its statement.

Byrnes currently is an intern at Sewickley Academy and is studying public relations and advertising at RMU. She hopes to pursue a career in donor relations geared toward a nonprofit childhood cancer foundation, as her nephew is a childhood cancer survivor.

She’s most looking forward experiencing all the St. Patrick’s Day events with her fellow court members, “Maidens” Anna Catherine Hanley of Sewickley and Brooke Ireland McArdle of Baldwin, and her family by her side.

“I think it’ll be really fun, and enjoy what God has given us for the week,” Byrnes said.