Nancy Sinatra Sr, a blessing and the light of our lives, say grieving family

The childhood sweetheart of Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, who became the first of his four wives and the mother of his three children, has died aged 101.

Her daughter, Nancy Sinatra Jr, confirmed the death via Twitter and her website, saying her mother died on Friday.

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

Nancy and Frank Sinatra had been dating as teenagers and married at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Jersey City, New Jersey, on February 4 1939, just as Frank’s singing career was about to take off.

Three years before marrying the former Nancy Barbato, he had landed a 15-minute show on a local radio station.

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 Nancy was employed as a secretary while her husband worked as a singing waiter.

After Frank became a 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 womaniser.

Nancy left Frank after his affair with actress Ava Gardner became public knowledge. Weeks after the pair’s divorce became final in 1951, Frank married Ava, while Sinatra went on to raise the couple’s three children: Nancy, Frank Jr and Tina.

After the gossip over the divorce died down, Nancy devoted herself to family and numerous celebrity friends, largely withdrawing from the spotlight.

She not only outlived her ex-husband, who died in 1998, but her son, who died in 2016.

She is credited, under the name Nancy Barbato, on the Internet Movie Database with just two TV and film appearances, in her daughter Nancy’s 1975 concert film, Nancy And Lee In Las Vegas, and in 1974 on her friend Dinah Shore’s talk show.

Nancy remained friendly with her ex-husband, the latter being said to have put in requests over the years for pasta and other Italian dishes she was known to be an expert at preparing.

She never remarried.

Picture: PA. Nancy Sinatra has died aged 101.

Picture: AP. The Sinatras in 1946.