When Vinnie Jones returned to Watford after signing for Chelsea, he had a couple of football mates staying with him. One day, one of them looked out of the window and spotted a woman roller-skating outside. “Wahey, look at this!” Jones looked out. “Oh my God! I can’t believe it!” It was Tanya. They had first met at 12, briefly dated as teenagers, then gone their separate ways. Now, years later, Jones had moved back into his old house, and Tanya was living next-door-but-one. She was going through a divorce. “Do I believe in fate? It’s all very spooky.” By then, Jones was known as one of English football’s hardest men. But Tanya had survived something extraordinary. At 21, after giving birth to her daughter Kaley, her heart failed, and she needed an emergency transplant. She would live with the consequences for the rest of her life. When Jones decided to marry her, he spoke to her father. “You know what you’re taking on?” “Yeah, I do know and I’m going to take care of her and look after her.” But Jones never believed he was rescuing Tanya. “I feel she was saved to save me, and I was meant to look after her.” They married in 1994. Jones later adopted Kaley, and the couple built a life together, eventually settling in Los Angeles as he moved from football into acting. Tanya survived cervical cancer twice, and both of them tried to live without letting their health problems define them. “We haven’t got time to think about ‘what if’ and ‘what about’. We make the most of life.” “We’ve been through a lot, so I just want her to enjoy life and for us to grow old together.” Then, in 2013, both were diagnosed with melanoma. Jones had a malignant growth removed beneath his eye and recovered. Tanya’s cancer kept returning. For six years, he stood beside her through hospital visits and treatments, keeping the promise he had made to her father. On Christmas Eve 2018, they learned the cancer had spread to Tanya’s brain. “That was the first time we broke down together.” Even then, Tanya wanted to make Christmas special for everyone. “She wanted to get through the Christmas.” Jones later reflected: “I think she knew she wasn’t going to make next Christmas.” By July 2019, doctors told him there were no treatments left. “In that last week of her life when the doctors said there were no more treatments, I never told her she was dying.” “We never spoke of that, I didn’t want her to know.” He slept beside her every night in hospital while Kaley visited every morning. “She has never ever slept one night in hospital without me there. I have always been by her side.” Eventually, Jones brought Tanya home so she could spend her final days surrounded by family. On the morning of July 6, he heard her breathing change. Everyone gathered around her bed. “We knew it was the end, we were cuddling her.” “I kissed her a lot and told her I loved her. I kept saying, ‘I love you, I love you’.” Tanya died at 53, with Jones and her family beside her, after 25 years of marriage. After her death, Jones discovered a card she had left with her diaries. On the front, it read: “Always believe something wonderful is about to happen.” Inside, Tanya had written: “To my love Vin, something wonderful happens to me every day. It’s being with you.” “You are my morning sunshine the moment I wake. All my love, Tanya.” Jones broke down when he read it. “I broke down when I read it because I loved her like that too.” He still carries the card everywhere. “Now I take it everywhere I go so Tanya is always with me.” The world knew Vinnie Jones as a football hardman. Tanya knew the boy he had been since he was 12. When people asked how their marriage lasted through so much, his answer was simple: “People say, how did it last?” “And I say because it was real, true love.” “I think we found true love.” ❤️