Céline Dion’s husband loses battle with cancer
LAS VEGAS • René Angélil, the entertainment maestro who guided Céline Dion to stardom and then married her, died on Thursday at his home in Las Vegas. He was 73.
Angélil had been battling a recurrence of throat cancer since initially undergoing surgery in April 1999. He had to undergo another operation in December 2013.
While Dion and Angélil’s entourage insisted he was doing well, Angélil stepped back from the day- to- day management of his megastar wife’s career in June 2014.
In March 2015, Dion announced she was resuming her residency at the Colosseum in Las Vegas after putting her career on hiatus for a year to help her husband in his recovery.
She said at the time that Angélil had a feeding tube and that she was helping him to eat three times a day. Despite his illness, it was Angélil who encouraged her to return to the stage.
“I didn’t want to be here at first. I don’t need it,” she told USA Today. “But René really gave me a gift.”
As she returned to Las Vegas, Dion said doctors weren’t able to say how long Angélil had to live, but that he’d already planned his funeral and told his wife he wanted to die in her arms.
The couple, who were 26 years apart in age, married in an elaborate ceremony in 1994 at Notre- Dame Basilica in Montreal that drew throngs.
Angélil was born in Montreal on Jan. 16, 1942, to a Syrian father and a Québécois mother and grew up in the city’s north- end Villeray district. He teamed up with friend Guy Cloutier to manage several up- and- coming Quebec artists including René Simard and Ginette Reno.
He later struck out on his own and in 1981 received an audiotape in the mail from Dion’s mother, who encouraged him to “listen to it carefully. It’s my 12- year- old daughter.”
Struck by the voice of the young woman, Angélil quickly took her under his wing. He reportedly mortgaged his home to finance her first album.
The raspy- voiced Angélil was also an avid poker player, finishing in the money at the 2007 Mirage Poker Showdown event on the World Poker Tour.
Dion and Angélil have three child re n—René-Charles, who was born in 2001, and twins Nelson and Eddy, who arrived in 2010. He also has a son and daughter from his previous two marriages.