Sir Tom Jones’s wife Melinda Rose Woodward has died after a “short but fierce battle with cancer”, it has been reported. Known as Linda, she was married to the Welsh singing legend for 59 years.
The couple had known each other from childhood and married at the age of 16, and they stayed together despite high-profile difficulties in their relationship over the years, and had one son, Mark, who is now his father’s manager.
A statement on Jones’s official website on Monday (April 11th) said: “Surrounded by her husband and loved ones, she passed away peacefully.” The family has now “asked for privacy at this difficult time.”
Sir Tom Jones’s wife Linda has died of cancer
Woodward opted to stay firmly out of the spotlight when her husband found huge worldwide fame in 1965 with his breakthrough hit ‘It’s Not Unusual’. She had previously suffered two cancer scares in recent years, and fans feared the worst when Jones recently cancelled a slew of dates in the Far East citing a “serious illness” in the family.
More: Sir Tom Jones pulls out of entire Asian tour due to “serious illness” in his family
In an interview with the BBC in 2015, Jones recalled admiring Linda from afar when they were both teenagers. “I was in love with her when I had TB when I was 12,” he said, “and I would be thinking ‘oh my god, let’s get this TB over with so I can hold her. So I really ached, you know. When they say heart ache, I physically ached.”
He also doubted whether he could continue his singing career if Linda died. He told chat show host Jonathan Ross back in October last year: “A lot of the songs that I do, the love songs that I do, of course it’s Linda is there and yes, she is the one.”
“I don’t want to go on about it but she wasn’t well a while ago and she got close to… we didn’t know whether she was going to make it or not and I said to Mark [my son] I said, ‘If your mother doesn’t make it, I don’t know whether I can sing’ because a lot of the songs that I do, I think of her when I do it so it would be hard if she wasn’t there to be able to sing.”
More: Sir Tom Jones hits out at ‘The Voice’ again, saying producers pressurised judges into picking singers
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