‘NICKY BROWNLESS RUINED MY MARRIAGE 5 YEARS AGO’
Garry G Lyon’s ex-wife Melissa breaks her silence on the affair that broke up her family and ripped two footy friends apart.
MELISSA Lyon’s marriage was ripped apart when she discovered her husband Garry Lyon was having a close secret relationship with his best friend’s wife Nicky Brownless.
But now the mother-of-three is ready to run her own race, the New York marathon and the rest of her life.
Pounding the pavement was what kept Melissa from falling to pieces as she carried the silent burden of knowing her 30-year love with Demons great Garry had collapsed.
Melissa says the marriage was doomed five years ago when she first confronted her husband and Billy’s then-wife Nicky about their secret relationship, not 18 months ago when the headlines broke.
“The truth is that five years ago she destroyed my marriage,” Melissa, 49 said from New York as she geared up for a quick training session before the gruelling 42.2km marathon in two days.
Truth! It’s a word that caught in Melissa’s throat last week as she was hitting her stride back in Melbourne.
Her phone had gone into meltdown with messages from friends like James Brayshaw’s ex-wife Sarah and family members reading a News Corp interview with Nicky, who said the former friends were all happy.
“We know the truth, that’s the most powerful thing,” Nicky proclaimed.
Melissa said she had never sprinted so fast, even laughing that she almost clocked a personal best, as she tried to absorb what Nicky was so publicly saying.
“She has never reached out to me to apologise, which show’s a person’s true colours,” Melissa said. “I couldn’t believe it. It just felt so disrespectful.
“I felt bad for Billy too. He has been really dignified through all this.”
The Lyon and Brownless families, who often travelled overseas together and had their last trip to the London Olympics five years ago, will be forever fractured.
“It has been hard,” Melissa said. “There is another person in all of this that no one seems to care about.
“We co-existed for a couple of years after I first found out. Things were amicable because I thought it had all stopped.
“I thought they knew it would all be too messy and they were smart. But yeah, they chose not to stop.
“I’m not going to lie, it still upsets me every day, the thought of them together.”
Melissa is the forgotten victim in the circus that’s ensued after the drama so publicly unfolded last year when Garry took leave from his television role on The Footy Show and Footy Classified, revealing he had been battling depression for several months.
“I am the first to want Garry to get help and support,” Melissa said. “Remember I was there with him for 30 years. But that doesn’t mean you can’t not address what happened, because it’s not something I’m ever going to be able to forget.”
Melissa has never been one to seek the limelight, preferring to focus on her three boys, Ben 23, Tom 21, and Josh 19, at their family home in Hawthorn.
Melissa isn’t interested in settling scores or addressing all the dirty laundry that followed on from that confrontation five years ago.
But there comes a time when the narrative needs to be corrected, so she can move on with her own life.
Garry and Melissa are still not divorced but finalised their financial settlement two weeks ago.
“Now the settlement is finally out of the way I definitely feel like I can move on,” she said.