Their romance showed the true power of love. Celine Dion‘s life has been highlighted in her new Prime Video documentary I Am: Celine Dion. A huge part of her success is owed to her husband René Angélil, who she considered her soulmate.
Related: What is Stiff-Person Syndrome? Behind Celine Dion’s ‘Devastating’ Diagnosis
Angélil discovered Celine Dion when she was 12-years-old in Quebec, Canada, and he was a 38-year-old record producer. The two officially started dating when she was 19 and he was 47 and became public with their relationship in 1993. They married a year later and were inseparable—being the only man that the “My Heart Will Go On” singer has kissed and been with. He acted as her manager and band leader until 2014 when he stepped down after a major diagnosis.
How did Celine Dion’s husband die?
René Angélil died of throat cancer on January 14, 2016, just two days short of his 74th birthday. He was surrounded by his loved ones in his Las Vegas home. He’s survived by his five children, Jean-Pierre (born 1974) and Anne-Marie Angélil (born 1977) from his two previous marriages, and René-Charles Angélil (born 2001), and twin boys Eddy and Nelson (born 2011) with Celine Dion.
His national funeral was held in Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal, where he and Dion wed 21 years earlier. Dion’s brother Daniel, died of cancer on what would have been Angélil’s birthday. Angélil was first diagnosed with throat cancer in 1999 and successfully recovered. In 2013, the cancer returned on their wedding anniversary.
The “Because You Loved Me” singer revealed her husband’s last dying wish to People. “I’ll say, ‘You’re scared? I understand. Talk to me about it’ And René says to me, ‘I want to die in your arms.’ Okay, fine, I’ll be there, you’ll die in my arms.”
Years after his death, Dion still pays tribute to her husband every day. “I’m still married to René,” she told People in 2024. “He’s still my husband. When we have to travel to my treatments to see my doctors, I always bring pictures [of him]. And we have pictures, of course, all over the place in the house.”
“Even when they were very small, even when he was still with us in his bed [when he was] in his room struggling, he was with us still,” she continued. “[They would tell him], ‘Dad, we’re going to be watching Ratatouille tonight, so I hope you like it.’ They were talking to him, and they kiss the pictures.”
When Celine Dion was diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome, she was thinking about how it would affect her children. “I barely could walk at one point, and I was missing very much living. My kids started to notice. I was like, ‘OK, they already lost a parent. I don’t want them to be scared,’” she told PEOPLE. “I let them know, ‘You lost your dad, [but] mom has a condition and it’s different. I’m not going to die. It’s something that I’m going to learn to live with.”
