In a wide-ranging interview covering her love of Chanel (and shoulderpads), her ambitions to become a gymnast and setting up home in Las Vegas, Celine Dion spends two hours with Radio 2 listeners this Sunday, paying an emotional tribute to her late husband Rene Angeli, who died in 2016.
“I was very, very lucky,” the 51-year-old says. “He had given me strength.
“I feel I have been fulfilled with so much of his love that I could carry on alone with my children for the rest of my life.”
The singer - who said this week she is not ready to think dating again - admits she doesn’t think their marriage would have lasted 25 years if Rene, who she wed in 1981 and has two children with, hadn’t also been her manager.
“If he had only been my husband, I was working so much I was not going to see him and vice versa,” she tells Steve Wright. “We always worked 50/50 as partners.
“When he passed to his other life he gave me the rest of his strength, the other 50.
"And I really feel that it came with a set of wings - he lifted me up. I feel him every day.
"And I see him in the eyes of my children every day. He will always be alive. I feel stronger than ever.”
“He’s the only man that I’ve ever kissed in my life. He’s my only boyfriend that I’ve had. And it was the best.”
Hear Celine say her blood is part Maple syrup, and how much Rene enjoyed her losing her voice for three weeks during Sunday’s special broadcast from 5pm on BBC Radio 2.
