AND WIFE ON 60 YEARS TOGETHER I don’t know what love is but I know I found it with Vince. I’m facing the end happy for the life we’ve had
SUNDAY MIRROR
hill so quickly we didn’t get a chance to speak, but I know he would have been stoic – he would have accepted that his number was up, that’s just how he was.
“Although we talk about many things when we meet with Debbie, we do remember the good times with Paul and I think that helps her.
“I know she’s a friend I’ll keep in touch with even if Annie’s not here.” Vince and Annie had just £17 saved up when they wed in 1959. They did not live together before marriage, and only slept together for the first time on their wedding night.
Vince says: “It was different back then – my dad would have gone bananas!”
As they scrimped and saved through the early years of their marriage, it was Annie who pushed shy Vince to leave The Raindrops for a solo career.
Her determination paid off. Vince had his first hit in 1962 with The Rivers Run Dry, and went on to become a multimillion selling artist.
His iconic 1967 recording of Edelweiss, the song from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music, reached No2 in the charts and became a platinum-seller.
Since then he has released 24 studio albums, sold out the Royal Albert Hall, London Palladium and Sydney Opera House, had his own TV shows and forged a career as a songwriter.
Proud Annie says: “I knew he could do it. He just had to believe in himself.”
But while the couple led a charmed life, rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous and making friends with stars from Cliff Richard to The Beatles, in private they faced heartache.
Desperate for a child, Annie went through six miscarriages.
Then at 31, having given up on her dream after 12 years of marriage, she found herself pregnant with a son. She said: “Vince burst into tears when I told him, we were over the moon. But we were terrified we’d lose him as I’d had so many miscarriages before.
“Vince wasn’t allowed in the delivery room – it wasn’t the done thing back then – but the first time he held Athol, he was in tears again. We both were.”
But even that joy was to be overtaken by sadness. Dad-of-two Athol died of an overdose in 2014, aged just 42.
With tears in her eyes, Annie says: “I couldn’t accept it. I still can’t. The only way I can live with it is by pretending he’s away travelling, that one day he’ll come back. I still speak to him every day.
“It’s the worst thing you can go through as parents and Vince and I dealt with it in different ways – but nothing could ever break us.”
It is an optimism with which the couple have faced adversities throughout their lives. In 2004, Vince was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was successfully treated – but a year later was found
to have acute mye l o i d leukaemia, undergoing extensive treatment before the illness was brought under control.
Annie knows this time it is she who is living on borrowed time. She cherishes every moment with Vince, and with grandchildren Niamh, 17, and Felix, five.
She says: “We’re so blessed to have them, I feel like Athol lives on in them.
“I know I’ve been lucky. I can’t say exactly why our marriage has lasted so long. We did argue, but we never went to bed on an argument. And making up was always fun.”
His famous voice cracking with emotion, Vince adds: “I can’t bear to think about losing Annie.
“I’ll have to keep going no matter how hard things are – and I want to live as long as I can to enjoy my grandchildren.”
Few people have experienced the love that Vince and I have – but Debbie is one ANNIE HILL ON CLOSE SHOWBIZ PALS DEBBIE McGEE AND PAUL DANIELS