Tom Jones Made Heartbreaking Promise to Late Wife Linda in Final Days Before Her Tragic Death

Tom Jones isn’t coy about the meaning behind his new song “I Won’t Crumble With You If You Fall.” It’s a tribute to his late wife, Linda, to whom he was married for 59 years. “This song is trying to tell you that people that you love, sometimes they need to be backed up,” he said before performing it on The Voice UK recently. “You need to give them strength and encouragement.”

Since Linda’s passing from lung cancer in 2016, Tom, 82, has had time to think about the way he and his wife supported each other over the years. “I’m glad we had our lives together, but I wish she was here now. We would be old together,” says Tom. “There was one love of my life, and that was Linda.”

The performer was born Thomas Woodward in South Wales and met Melinda Trenchard, known as Linda, when they were both 12. “We grew up together, and we loved one another ever since we saw one another,” recalls Tom. Back then, they bonded over their shared love of music. “We could have been a double act if she wanted to,” he says. “But she didn’t have the desire for it.”

They wed in 1957 when Tom had just turned 17. Linda was 16 and eight months pregnant with their son, Mark. To support his new family, Tom worked construction and sang in pubs at night, with Linda’s blessing. “She was 100 percent behind me,” recalls Tom. “She said, ‘Whatever I’ve got to do to help you get to where you want to go, or where we want to go, I will do it, we will do it.’”

By 1964, the singer was renamed Tom Jones and struck gold with his second single, “It’s Not Unusual.” In marketing Tom as a sex symbol, his record company initially hid the existence of his wife and son. In time, Tom became almost as famous for his tight pants, open shirts and the rain of panties that were tossed on stage by his frenzied fans every show than he was for his glorious, full-throated baritone. 

Linda followed her husband to California and set up a home for their family in a Bel Air mansion that used to belong to Dean Martin, but she remained firmly in the background. “Home is where Linda wants to be,” said Tom. “She didn’t want to come out and do what I do. And that’s OK. I got famous, and she felt the best way to cope was by staying right out of it.”

Other hits followed, including “Delilah,” “What’s New Pussycat?” and “Help Yourself.” From 1969 to 1971, he also starred in a TV variety series, This Is Tom Jones, where he duetted with Liza Minnelli, Cher, Stevie Wonder and Ella Fitzgerald. As Tom’s star rose higher, he spent more time on tour — and away from Linda. “It’s as if I have two completely different parts of my life: on the road, where I do concerts and what have you, and at home, where I’m with [Linda],” he said. “I don’t mind. Actually, in many ways, it rather suits me.”

In the heady days of his early success, Tom relied on Linda to bring him down to earth. “Your head gets a bit large when you start to get hit records,” he explains. “But she would pull me up. She’d say, ‘You don’t really think you’re Tom Jones, do you?’”

When he returned home, Linda did not ask what he did on the road, but Tom wasn’t faithful. He engaged in a two-year relationship with Mary Wilson of the Supremes and bragged about bedding 250 women in a year. In 1988, a model gave birth to Tom’s son. “It’s not an area of my life that I’m proud of,” admits Tom, who says that Linda only became upset when his infidelity made the news. “She beat me up one night because a thing came out in the newspaper,” he admits. “I think she was more bothered because it was in the press.”

Linda appeared to handle it all, but it must have been a burden. “Her friends and family gave her tons of unsolicited advice to leave him,” admits a friend, “but she always said that she knew the real Tom better than anyone.”

As the years passed, Linda became more reclusive. She wouldn’t go out to dinner with her husband for fear of being photographed. She skipped the ceremony when Queen Elizabeth II knighted Tom — a moment he called the proudest of his career. “She is not crazy about the way she looks,” said Tom. “She never wanted her picture taken or to do interviews. She is even more like that now.” 

In later life, Linda also suffered from emphysema and weathered two bouts with cancer. Despite everything, they never considered divorcing. “How do you walk away from somebody that you get along so well with? What’s the point?” he said. “She loves being married to me, and I love being married to her. She’s still the Welsh girl I married.”

In 2016, when Linda was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer, Tom canceled his tour. He and Mark were by her side during her last days. “She was the calmest person in the room,” Tom recalls. “I was a basket case, honestly, and so was Mark. The two of us were like two gibbering idiots.”

Before she left him, Linda made Tom promise he wouldn’t die with her. He received counseling and returned to the stage two months later. He also followed through on their plans to move back to London, after decades in California. “She was a strong woman. She was always there,” Tom says. “It was a wonderful, wonderful feeling to have known someone like that all my life.”