Tom Jones’ wife, Lady Melinda Rose Woodward, passed away on Sunday.
A rep for the singer issued a statement on Facebook saying Woodward, who also went by Linda, fought a “short but fierce battle with cancer.” She was 75.
“Surrounded by her husband and loved ones, she passed away peacefully at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Sir Tom and his family have asked for privacy at this difficult time and no further information is currently available.”
The couple had one child together, Mark Woodward. Jones has another son, Jonathan Berkery, from another relationship.
Jones and Woodward, who were married for 59 years, shared a somewhat unconventional marriage. The singer had several extramarital affairs, which were well publicized, throughout his career.
Last week, Jones, 75, suddenly canceled a string of shows across Southeast Asia due to a “serious illness in his immediate family.” At the time, there was no indication that his wife was ill.
In his 2015 memoir, “Over the Top and Back: The Autobiography,” Jones revealed his wife battled health issues in the past, including depression, and developed emphysema from smoking, according to The Daily Mail.
Jones previously admitted that if his wife died, he would have great difficulty performing again.
“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,” Jones revealed in a 2015 interview on the “Jonathan Ross Show,” according to BreakingNews.ie. “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.”