Celine Dion's Age When She Met Husband René Angélil Is Raising Eyebrows
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Celine Dion‘s age difference with her late-husband René Angélil has raised plenty of eyebrows over the years and is once again a hot topic amid the release of her Prime Video documentary I Am: Celine Dion.
The couple were married for an impressive 21 years until Angélil’s death in 2016, welcoming three children during their marriage — René-Charles, born in 2001, and twins Eddy and Nelson, born in 2010. However, their age gap and the circumstances of their relationship would likely stir up a lot of controversy if their romance began today.
What was Celine Dion and her husband’s age difference?
Dion and Angélil had a 26-year age gap. They met in 1980 when Dion was 12 years old and Angélil was 38, when he became her manager.
Angélil and Dion began secretly dating when she was 19 and he was 43, though the singer later admitted to Access Hollywood, via HuffPost, that their relationship first turned romantic about a year earlier.
After six years of dating in secret, they revealed their romance in 1993 and married in 1994. Dion was 26 when she married Angélil, who was 52.
When Angélil and Dion met, he was already a father of three and married to his second wife. That marriage ended shortly before his romance with Dion began.
In a 2016 interview, Dion claimed she fell for Angélil instantly. “I fell in love with him immediately. Not in the romance way, I was 12 years old. I was in love with the way he treated everyone around me, including my whole family and myself,” she told CBS’s Mo Rocca.
In that same interview, Dion also revealed that Angélil was the only man she’s ever kissed, referring to him as: “The only man that I kissed, the only man that I loved.”
“I never kissed another man in my life,” she continued. “So the man of my life was my partner, and we were one. So when he stopped suffering I said to myself, he’s okay. And he deserves not to suffer.”
She also admitted her memoir, Céline Dion: My Story, My Dream that she used to sleep with a photo of Angélil under her pillow. Also in her memoir, she revealed that they first spent the night together after she won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1988. “I threw myself into his arms,” she wrote. “Later that night, I was seated at the head of the bed, legs folded under the covers. I was happy about being alone with the man I loved.”
Angélil passed away in 2016 after a battle with throat cancer.
Before you go, click here to see celebrity couples with significant age differences.