When it comes to believing in true love, Kaley Jones needs no convincing. After seeing parents Vinnie and Tanya’s utter devotion first hand, she is in no doubt of its power.
Tanya may have lost her six-year battle with cancer at just 53 but Kaley says her inspiration will live for ever.
“My parents taught me the meaning of real love,” she says. “That will never die.”
In her first interview, the 32-year-old tells of her heartache at looking after her grieving dad – but also of her vow to marry her partner in honour of her parents’ “true love story”.
Despite meeting as teens, they only got together years later. But from that moment, Vinnie and Tanya were smitten and became one of showbusiness’s most enduring romances.
As a child and a teen, Kaley – who was adopted by Vinnie – watched her parents’ love remain as fervent, deep and playful as when they met.
She says: “The way those two were, I thought it was normal because it was all I knew. It was good for me. They taught me a lot about what love is and were certainly still romantic.
“I always watched them give each other little love notes, they left cards on each other’s pillows. Mum always said that was really important.
“She taught me to keep love, she said when you have got something special, the way to hold on to it is to nurture and respect the love. She said you have to lift your partner up and she did that with my dad very well.
"She was someone he was able to be his complete self with. He talked to her about everything, asked her opinion on everything. If he wasn’t in the country, they were FaceTiming, texting. She looked after him, kept him grounded. It was like she tamed him.”
But they faced devastating news when Tanya was diagnosed with cancer in 2013. And Kaley was present in their darkest moments, quitting her job as a therapist to give round-the-clock care.
“Even in hospital, she was talking about their upcoming 25th wedding anniversary,” Kaley says. “She was talking about how in love they were. Every doctor or nurse, she would tell them their love story.”
Tanya died in July after the cancer, which began as melanoma, spread to her brain. Despite her own grief, Kaley has focused on 54-year-old Vinnie’s too, reminding him to do even the most basic tasks as he tries to come to terms with the loss of his soulmate.
“He needs me to look after him,” Kaley says, “doing everything she would, making sure he is eating, that his clothes are getting dry cleaned, because he has never lived on his own.”
Kaley now plans to marry her own partner, chef Lauren Keefe, 32, and hopes they can share the kind of joy her parents knew. She says: “When Lauren told Mum her face lit up and she said, ‘Do you have a ring?’.
“But Lauren didn’t. So my mum said, ‘She would like something simple. Nothing like my ring.’ My dad got her a ring last Christmas. It was pink diamonds and Mum kept it by her bed. She would kiss it and pray into it. It’s really blingy, the opposite to what I would want.”
Tanya had a heart transplant aged 21, shortly after Kaley was born.
Lauren asked Tanya's blessing for Kaley’s hand in marriage just a few days before she passed away.
Kaley said: "Lauren vowed to Mum that she would take care of me the way Mum took care of my dad.”
She recently found journals her mum wrote during that difficult time.
“My mum documented the experience of giving birth to me in her diaries,” she says. “She wrote about how she no longer feared death but had a strong desire to live.
“She wrote that she looked at the other patients and knew everyone was dying but what she didn’t know is if they had as strong a desire to live as she did because she believed she was supposed to live to be my mum.
"She wrote a poem to me when I was three saying I was everything she dreamed I could be. It read, ‘Never be afraid to die because I will be waiting for you in the sky’.
"She was grateful she got to be my mum as long as she did. When you look at her medical history, she was defying the odds.
“She never complained or showed that she was afraid.”
And Kaley takes solace in knowing Tanya saw her achieve what she always hoped for her.
“The one thing Mum wanted for me, I know she knows I have found – true love.”
