Martina Šimkovičová

Martina Šimkovičová (Bučuričová; born 29 August 1971) is a Slovak television presenter and politician. From 2016 to 2020 she served as a Member of the National Council. Since October 2023, she has been serving as the Minister of Culture of Slovakia.

Biography
Martina Šimkovičová was born on 29 August 1971 in Modra as the youngest of three sisters. She wanted to study acting but missed entrance exams and ended up studying special pedagogy at the Comenius University instead.

TV career
Martina Šimkovičová started her TV career with Markíza TV channel in 1998, initially as an early morning show host and sports anchor. In 2004 and 2005 she won the OTO Awards in the Sports presenter category.

In 2006 she switched to presenting the main news program, where she formed a pair with Patrik Švajda. In 2006 she was again awarded the OTO Award prize, this time in the News presenter category. In 2010 she competed in the Let's Dance show. Following the birth of her third child in 2013, she took a break in her television career to focus on raising her family.

Šimovičová briefly returned to Markíza in February 2015 as a host of a celebrity gossip show, Reflex Špeciál. In summer 2015, she was fired from Markíza for posting hateful content about Syrian war refugees on her Facebook page.

Following her firing, previously apolitical Šimkovičová established herself as a star of the far-right media, in particular by posting xenophobic, anti-vax, homophobic and pro-Russian content on Facebook. She was the main face of the unsuccessful attempt to launch a new television far-right TV channel INTV. In 2018 she was nominated for the Homophobe of the year award by the Institute for Human Rights for regular Facebook posts promoting hate against the LGBT community. In 2021, she became the host at the newly founded internet television Slovan.

Political career
In the 2016 Slovak parliamentary election, she was elected to the parliament for the We Are Family political party. However, soon after the election, she was expelled from the party for casting a parliamentary vote for herself as well as for her fellow We Are Family MP Rastislav Holúbek. Following the incident, Šimkovičová was fined €1,000 for breaching the code of conduct of the parliament, but refused to resign and served the rest of the term as an independent MP.

In the 2020 Slovak parliamentary election, Šimkovičová led the list of the Voice of the People party, which received less than 2,000 votes, far below the representation threshold.

In the 2023 Slovak parliamentary election, Šimovičová successfully ran on the list of the Slovak National Party (SNS). Šimkovičová claimed she picked the SNS because it allowed "independent personalities" to run on its list. Following the forming of a government coalition including SNS, the party chairman Andrej Danko announced Šimkovičová's nomination for the position of Minister of Culture.

Personal life
Martina Šimkovičová has been married twice. She has one daughter from her first marriage. From 2005 to 2019 she was married to car racer Igor Šimkovič. They have two children together.