Frank Sinatra’s first wife Nancy dies at 101

NANCY SINATRA SR., the childhood sweetheart of Frank Sinatra who became the first of his four wives and the mother of his three children, has died. She was 101.

Her daughter, Nancy Sinatra Jr., tweeted that her mother died Friday and a posting on her web page said she died at 6:02 pm but didn’t indicate where she died.

“She was a blessing and the light of my life,” her daughter said.

Nancy and Frank Sinatra had been dating as teenagers and married on February 4, 1939, just as Frank’s singing career was about to take off. During the marriage’s early years, the Sinatras lived in a modest apartment in Jersey City, where their two eldest children were born. For a time she was employed as a secretary while her husband worked as a singing waiter.

After Sinatra became a pop-music sensation in the 1940s, the couple moved to Los Angeles, where the singer would also become a movie star, raconteur, man about town and notorious womanizer.

That latter accomplishment led Sinatra to leave him after an affair with actress Ava Gardner became public knowledge.

After the gossip over the divorce and Gardner marriage died down, Nancy Sinatra devoted herself to family and numerous celebrity friends, largely withdrawing from the spotlight. She not only outlived her husband, who died in 1998, but her son, who died in 2016.