Sir Tom Jones was married to his wife Linda for 59 years before her sad death, and considered her "the one". The couple were childhood sweethearts with their first meeting taking place when they were both eight. Tom and Linda remained an item up until Linda's death at the age of 75 in 2016 following a third cancer diagnosis. Tom has spoken candidly of their love over the years, including confessing to having numerous affairs during the height of his fame.
First meeting
Tom married his childhood sweetheart Melinda (known as Linda) Trenchard in 1957 when he was just 17 years old. In his autobiography Over the Top and Back, the legendary singer recalled how he fell for Linda when they were only just eight years old. Tom pursued Linda for years before she finally agreed to go on a date with him when she was 15.
Just two years later, the couple fell pregnant with their first and only child, a son they named Mark. To support his young family, Tom took a job working in a glove factory, but it wasn't long before his singing career took off. In a rare interview, Linda once said of her husband: "I feel alive when [Tom] comes through the door, whatever the time of day or night is."
© Ian TyasTom jokingly said on Radio 2 of the first time he saw her: "I remember her playing marbles and I thought, '’My God, what great legs she's got.’ And then she stood up and she was as pretty in the face as her legs were. We started playing kiss-chase. I felt different when I kissed her, and she felt the same way. We started dancing together when we were 15. She would look great."
Affairs
While the couple were completely devoted to each other, Tom's success as a singer led him to spend months away from Linda. Tom has spoken candidly in the past about his multiple affairs and the impact his infidelity had on his wife. The singer has admitted to being intimate with "over 250" other women a year at the height of his fame.
© Evening StandardWriting in his autobiography, he said: "When you're a performer and you find something that works, you work it - so it grew and it built. When I stooped, mid-song, to kiss the women who had forced their way to the edge of the stage, it wasn't just a peck on the cheek. It was full-on, mouth-to-mouth. I was going over as some kind of love god, and I was going over so strongly that occasionally I was even persuaded of it myself.
"The road will set temptations in front of you that are hard to resist." During an appearance on The Jonathan Ross Show in 2016, he said: "[The affairs were] never discussed, I was never put on the spot. Linda is a wonderful person and she would never put me on the spot. She loves being married to me and I love being married to her."
Linda's death
A lifelong smoker, Linda beat lung cancer twice before eventually succumbing to the disease at the age of 75 in 2016 after a "short but fierce" battle. Tom was left absolutely devastated by Linda's death, and told the Sunday Mirror: "When my wife passed away – God bless her – I didn't know whether I would make it.
© Keystone Press Agency/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock"There were days when I felt I couldn't get up, you don't want to get out of bed to start with." Following her death, Tom moved out of their £6.5 million mansion in LA and returned to the UK, where he bought a flat in London, something he said Linda wanted to do in her final years but was not able to due to her fear of flying.
