Jane McDonald broke down in tears on her first appearance on Loose Women for two years.
The fan favourite returned to the popular ITV daytime programme to share her emotional story about her fiance's death.
The 58-year-old struggled to contain her emotions as she opened up on her heartache after she lost Ed Rothe in March to lung cancer at the age of 67.
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She said: "He was gorgeous. I don’t want to feel sad for the rest of my life because that wasn’t Ed. Ed was golden, he was smiley, he was beautiful.
"I get to do the first interview and I couldn’t be with better people here.”
Ed was a member of the Searchers and had a romance with Jane in their late teens before drifting apart.
On their romance when they were younger, Jane said: “27 years apart. I only went out for a loaf of bread, but I knew he had to go off and do his rock and roll.
"He was with Liquid Gold then and he was just great, he’s just a beautiful man. Part of me thought, ‘I’m never going to keep him’.
"I was a barmaid and he was this big star. And I thought one day, ‘I’ll go and let him be a superstar’ and he did.”
The pair rekindled their romance in 2008 after a member of the Loose Women make up team encouraged Jane to speak to Ed when he was making an appearance at the This Morning studios.
Jane said: "Donna dragged me up to see him at the This Morning green room. I’d seen him on the monitor and I’d been on my own for a while, so I was a bit like ‘old maid’, Miss Havisham… and so she [Donna] said, ‘Come on, go and say hello to him.’
"She dragged me up to the This Morning green room and I just walked in and he picked me up and swung me around and that was it.”
Jane opened up on how she had to have a crash course in nursing after Ed was diagnosed with lung cancer.
She said: “One thing I’m grateful for as well, because it was in lockdown, nobody was allowed to take care of him, so I had to have a crash course in nursing.
"Ryan [nurse] came and showed me how to do everything. Because it was lung cancer, they were scared of him getting Covid... I took over everything. That was a privilege.
“At first I thought, ‘How am I going to do this?’ But then you get a strength when you’re nursing your loved one. I learnt how to do it. I changed all the dressings and I cared for him and I nursed him and I’m glad I did.”
Jane and Ed decided to keep his battle with cancer quiet and she announced that he had passed away in May.
She said: “It was my grief and I don’t think people want to see me like that. Ed was a very private person - he would not have wanted that.
"It was so sad that his friends and all his family couldn’t come and see him. It's so sad that that happened. But so many of us out there had the same and I’m not on my own.”
Loose Women airs weekdays from 12:30pm on ITV and ITV Hub
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