Sylvie Françoise van der Vaart (née Meis; born 13 April 1978) is a Dutch television personality and model. She is the wife of footballer Rafael van der Vaart.
Aged 18, Meis decided that she wanted to be a model and was cast for various shoots by casting agencies.[vague] After becoming interested in television, she gained popularity through assignments at FoxKids and music station TMF. She hosts several events at TMF, such as presenting the annual TMF-awards, and conducting interviews with international artists such as Britney Spears and Kylie Minogue. In addition, she features in video clips and the Dutch TV-series Costa. She also introduced the Pure by Sylvie jewellery line to the Dutch market. Thereafter, she hosted the 2008 FIFA World Player of the Year award ceremony.
Sylvie is of partly Indo-European descent, her father being Indo, her mother being Dutch.
Aged 18, Meis decided that she wanted to be a model and was cast for various shoots by casting agencies.[vague] After becoming interested in television, she gained popularity through assignments at FoxKids and music station TMF. She hosts several events at TMF, such as presenting the annual TMF-awards, and conducting interviews with international artists such as Britney Spears and Kylie Minogue. In addition, she features in video clips and the Dutch TV-series Costa. She also introduced the Pure by Sylvie jewellery line to the Dutch market. Thereafter, she hosted the 2008 FIFA World Player of the Year award ceremony.
Sylvie is of partly Indo-European descent, her father being Indo, her mother being Dutch.
Sylvie has been in a relationship with footballer Rafael van der Vaart since 2003. On 10 June 2005, Sylvie married Rafael and on 28 May 2006, their son Damián Rafael was born. Some of the media have described the couple as the "new Beckhams" but both of them denied the claims saying that they prefer to just live a normal life.
On 16 June 2009, she announced that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and had undergone surgery in May 2009. She has finished post-op chemotherapy and is cancer free. In the summer of 2009, Real Madrid wanted to sell Rafael van der Vaart, but the player decided to stay in Madrid because Sylvie was undergoing cancer treatments there. A year later, upon his move to England, Rafael stated "She had a very serious illness and it is true that she had to be treated at the Clinica Quiron. Last season, they wanted me to leave but I couldn't leave for that reason. Now she is well and the only thing that happened was that Madrid wanted to sell and I wanted to get back to enjoying playing football, and Tottenham are a great team that are going to give me the football opportunities that I need."
