When Alexandra Ívarsdóttir told customers in February 2026 that she was closing the children’s shop she had built, she said running it had felt like raising a third child. She had won Miss Iceland at eighteen, then spent nearly two decades moving through work that had nothing to do with pageants or football. Most articles about her still introduce her only as the wife of footballer Gylfi Sigurdsson.
| Quick Facts | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Alexandra Helga Ívarsdóttir |
| Born | 10 August 1989, Reykjavík, Iceland |
| Best known for | Miss Iceland 2008, Miss World semifinalist |
| Spouse | Gylfi Sigurdsson, footballer, married June 2019 |
| Children | Melrós Mía (born 2021) and Róman Þór (born 2024) |
| Past and present work | Flight attendant, jewellery designer, personal trainer, business owner |
Table of Contents
Miss Iceland, Then Miss World
Ívarsdóttir grew up in Reykjavík and won the Miss Iceland title in 2008. The win sent her to Miss World that December, held in Johannesburg, South Africa, where 109 women competed for the crown.
Ívarsdóttir did not win the main title. Only three Icelandic women have ever become Miss World, and 2008 was not one of those years. She won a separate event instead, the Miss World Sports competition, where contestants raced, played cricket and built boats out of cardboard a little over a week before the final. That result put her through to the semifinal, where she finished in the top fifteen.
Meeting Gylfi Sigurdsson
Ívarsdóttir and Sigurdsson found each other on Facebook in 2010. He was a young professional footballer, his career then taking him from England to Germany. She was working as a flight attendant for Emirates, based in Dubai.
The relationship stayed long distance for a while. Sigurdsson’s career kept moving through Germany and then several English clubs, including two separate spells at Swansea City and a stop at Tottenham Hotspur, before he settled at Everton in 2017. Icelandic newspapers were already describing the pair as a couple by 2011.
In the years that followed, before the wedding, Ívarsdóttir also worked as a jewellery designer and a fashion blogger, moving between countries as his career required it. Sigurdsson proposed in the Bahamas on 7 July 2018, and they married the following June, in 2019, at Villa Balbiano on Lake Como in Italy.
Two Children After a Long Wait
The couple had been trying for a baby for years before the wedding took place. Ívarsdóttir has said publicly, more than once, that she and Sigurdsson first sought medical help around age 25, after she sensed something was not right, and that it still took years after that to conceive.
Their daughter, Melrós Mía, was born in the UK on 5 May 2021, in the middle of the COVID pandemic. Ívarsdóttir has said she attended most of her prenatal appointments alone because of the restrictions in place at the time, while under close monitoring from fertility specialists.
A second child, a son named Róman Þór, was born on 17 October 2024. Announcing the pregnancy, Ívarsdóttir wrote that the news had felt unexpected, coming after everything the couple had already been through to have their first child.
The Case Against Gylfi Sigurdsson
Just over two months after their daughter was born, in July 2021, Greater Manchester Police arrested Sigurdsson in England on suspicion of a sexual offence against a minor. Everton suspended him immediately. He was placed under a UK travel ban and released on bail, unable to return home to Iceland.
Ívarsdóttir stayed in Iceland throughout, while Sigurdsson’s own family travelled to England to support him, and stopped posting on social media completely during that time.
The case lasted 637 days. In April 2023, Greater Manchester Police and the Crown Prosecution Service dropped it, saying there was not enough evidence to bring charges. Sigurdsson was never charged with anything. His Everton contract ran out later that year, and he went on to play professional football in Denmark before returning home to Iceland, where he plays today for Víkingur Reykjavík and remains the national team’s all time top scorer.
Ívarsdóttir reactivated her Instagram account once the case closed. By then, she had already spent a year running a business of her own.
Building Móa and Mía
Alexandra Ívarsdóttir and her friend Móeiður Lárusdóttir had founded the company in March 2022, more than a year before the case against Sigurdsson was resolved, while he was still barred from coming home. They called it Móa & Mía, combining their daughters’ names, and traded simply as Mía. It began as an online shop before opening a physical store in Reykjavík, selling imported baby clothes, toys and furniture that had not been easy to find in Iceland before.
“Mía has been my third child from the day it opened,” Ívarsdóttir told customers in February 2026, announcing that she was closing the shop after four years.
Ívarsdóttir said keeping it running alongside two actual children had become too much, and that she planned to focus on other projects instead.
What Comes Next
Ívarsdóttir has not said publicly what those other projects are. Her working life since Miss Iceland has included modelling, flying for an airline, jewellery design, food writing, personal training and running a shop, rarely staying in any one of them for long. Sigurdsson, across the same years, has done one job, playing professional football for club after club in three different countries.
Whatever she does next, her record so far suggests it will not be the last thing she tries.
