Big Tom’s daughter says he died of a broken heart just three months after the passing of his beloved wife.
Aisling McBride Duffy has revealed the country music legend, who passed away in April 2018, never expected his wife to die before him.
A new RTE documentary on the life of the King of Irish country music Tom McBride revealed his devastation when his wife Rose died in January of the same year.
Aisling said: “Mum getting sick was quite a shock. Although she had an underlying health condition it never really held her back.
“She was the healthy one, he was the sick one and he was older than mum. I think dad always felt he would be one who would go first. When mum got sick, and her sickness was really very fast, he didn’t have much time to come to terms with it.
“It was a great shock to him that she actually had passed and he just couldn’t cope with it. He felt the major part of him was missing and 12 weeks later he was gone.”
The documentary reveals how Ireland’s answer to Johnny Cash first got the nickname of Big Tom while playing Gaelic football in his youth due to his strapping frame.
RTE’s Cloch Le Carn looks back on the 50 years that Big Tom reigned at the top of the charts. The documentary traces how Tom, who was born into a modest farming family in Co Monaghan in 1936, joined the band The Mainliners at the start of the 60s.
He became the first Irish recording artist to sell 50,000 records and had countless No1 hits. Aisling said her family were lifted by crowds of people who made the journey to pay their last respects to her father.
She added: “It was a great comfort to us all that he was loved so much.”
Cloch Le Carn – Big Tom will be on RTE One on Tuesday at 7pm.
