Gary Speed's widow Louise has faced fresh heartbreak after her second husband died from cancer.
Louise found love with long-time business partner Quinton Bird and the couple got married in December 2021. But he sadly died just six months after their wedding, at age 53, following a two-year battle with brain cancer, the Mirror reported this week.
Quinton had helped Louise cope with her loneliness following Welsh football manager Gary’s tragic death in November 2011. Mother-of-two Louise and Quinton had been business partners for six years, and were both directors of successful new build and renovation company Bow Property Development in Chester.
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Quinton, a father of three, and Louise tied the knot in a stunning ceremony at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire just before Christmas 2021, with former Newcastle and England striker Alan Shearer - a close friend and former team-mate of Gary - in attendance. Tragically, Bird succumbed to an aggressive form of brain tumour last year - a condition he had been battling for two years.
His devastated father Roy gave a moving tribute and said that losing his son 'at such a young age is beyond words'. He added that Quinton was a 'wonderful' father and the entire family 'had been left with a wealth of beautiful and extraordinary memories.'
The tragic loss comes just over a decade since Gary's death in 2011. Louise and Gary were just 15 years old when they went on their first date together in the eighties.
She opened up about the impact his death had had on her in November 2021. "It was like being in the worst nightmare possible," she said in a brave interview. "There were no answers and no Gary walking through the door again. Nothing was ever going to be right again. I was trudging through life, just functioning. If I could have been anybody else apart from me, for a long time, I would have happily taken it.
"But we are 10 years on now. It's a cliche but time is a healer even if it takes years. I have learned that life can be good again, can be great again. I don't think you move on from something like this as the same person. I have become wiser. I am probably more confident than I was.
"But I tend to wear a body of armour around me the whole time, if I am honest - so that I cannot be hurt again. I don't know if that body of armour has developed over time or whether I deliberately put it on at some point. All I know is that it is there now and it wasn't 10 years ago.
Gary had suffered with depression throughout his adult life and wrote a letter expressing suicidal thoughts as a 17-year-old but never sent it. "That was the first I knew of it," added Louise. "But my conclusion is that to do what Gary did you must be unwell in your mind. He couldn't talk, didn't want to talk. He had all the opportunity through people like the League Managers Association."
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