Tom Jones and his wife Linda met when they were very young. They had one son Mark, who later became Sir Tom’s manager for many years. Sir Tom and Linda’s marriage lasted a long while, but there were numerous indiscretions.
How long were Sir Tom Jones and his wife Linda together?
Sir Tom Jones and his wife Melinda “Linda” Trenchard met as teenagers, and married aged 16.
As part of his 80th birthday celebrations, Sir Tom told the heartwarming story of how he met Linda.
Speaking in a BBC Radio 2 documentary to mark his big birthday, Sir Tom said: “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.
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“She was the best-looking girl around there and we got together. It was magic.”
Of course, friends in Pontypridd, Wales, where Sir Tom and Linda are from, knew not to mess with his girlfriend Linda once they got together, even more so when the pair married aged 16.
In an exclusive chat with Express.co.uk, Tom Jones biographer Colin Macfarlane said: “According to several people I’ve spoken to she was the most beautiful woman in Pontypridd.
“The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and Tom landed the big catch there.
“And then Tom wouldn’t allow anyone to chat her up and he would get into a fight if anyone tried to chat up Linda Woodward.
“His pals would say, ‘Linda is Tommy’s girl,’ but of course when she got pregnant that became apparent.”
Linda and Sir Tom got pregnant and married as teenagers in March 1957, just a month before their son Mark was born.
The couple was together for 59 years before Linda died of cancer in 2016.
Sir Tom was heartbroken at this, and moved out of their home together in LA, reportedly selling a great number of their possessions.
Did Sir Tom Jones have an affair?
Sir Tom Jones’ dalliances with women are well known, as he himself claimed he bedded up to 250 women a year in his heyday.
The star was forced to deal with the wrath of his wife Linda when one of those affairs went very public.
Writing in the Daily Mail in 2006, Clemmie Moodie said: “After having countless affairs during their 49-year marriage, Sir Tom Jones could hardly argue that he didn’t have it coming.
“Linda, who has stood by the 66-year-old singer throughout the decades of well-publicised philandering, snapped after reading about one infidelity in a newspaper.”
Sir Tom spoke about the incident himself on American TV, saying: “She beat me up physically one night.
“I said, ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ and she’d got the newspaper there.
“She said, ‘You…’ I said, ‘There it is [pointing at chin],’ and she went ‘Bang!’ And then started kicking me.”
He said something very similar about when his wife saw reports of his affair with Miss World Marjorie Wallace, who was caught kissing Sir Tom on the beach in Barbados in 1976.
He said: “I stood there and took it. She chinned me. She punched and shouted.
“She’s the most important thing in my life. An unbelievable woman.”
In 1987, Jones had a brief relationship with model Katherine Berkery while he was on tour in the USA, after which she discovered she was pregnant.
In 1989, there was a fierce legal battle between Jones and Berkery, and eventually, after DNA testing, a court rules Jones was the boy Jonathan’s, father.
Since then it has been reported Sir Tom refuses to have a relationship with Jonathan, despite the boy calling on his father to reach out.
In 2008, Sir Tom spoke about Jonathan, and it is the only time he has spoken about it.
At the time, he said: “It wasn’t something I had planned.
“If I had planned it, I would have done something more than just financially.
“But it wasn’t. I just fell for it. I just fell for the seduction.”
In 2019, Jonathan told the Daily Mail: “I do not want help with my career or anything like that. I just want to meet my father before it’s too late.
“As we both know, life is too short to let the important things pass by, so let me know when you get a chance.”
His plea came after his father was hospitalised due to a bacterial infection.
Jonathan has also spoken out on Sir Tom’s 2008 interview, where he believed the singer implied Katherine “tricked him.”
In response to this, he said: “In 2008 he finally gave an interview acknowledging me but said my mother had tricked him. It wasn’t true and it really hurt.
“I got into drugs – cocaine and ecstasy. I was trying to numb the pain…
“I’ve straightened myself out now and mellowed. I just want to see my father before it is too late.”
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