Canadian singer Celine Dion, best known for her Titanic song ‘My Heart Will Go On’, has spent most of her time in Las Vegas for her show, and she has been doing it alone. Four years ago, Dion’s husband and manager Rene Angelil, died of throat cancer, and since then, many have wondered if the 52-year-old singer would start dating again.
These questions came out because Dion was 26 years younger than her husband, as the two first met when she was just 12 years old and he was 38. But even after some speculation has come out that Dion has moved on to someone else, the singer told Today that she doesn’t date and that it’s not time yet for her to think about dating someone else.
“I don't date. I'm not ready to date,” said Dion. “I'm very lucky and happy to have so many people in my surrounding to make me — they make me laugh.”
But questions still keep coming up, as she is still considered young at 52 years old, and in a prime spot to be dating, now that her children have grown older.
Marriage To Rene
There was a lot of controversy around the marriage of Celine Dion and Rene Angelil, as some considering it very creepy that the man she would eventually call her husband had known her since she was 12 years old and he was pushing 40. Their relationship didn’t turn romantic until she was 20 years old, and it was kept quiet for nearly five years, with only friends and family knowing about it.
In her 2000 autobiography, ‘My Story, My Dream’, Dion said she kept a photo of Rene under her pillow, and hid the photo from her mother thinking she would find it. She wrote;
"Less and less could I hide from myself the fact that I was in love with Rene; I had all the symptoms," said Dion. "I was in love with a man I couldn't love, who didn't want me to love him, who didn't want to love me.”
Considering Rene had been with Dion most of her life as her manager, Dion’s mother was worried something bad was going on. But by the time Dion was 19, she was free and legal to make up her own mind. By the time she was 25, the two were engaged, as Angelil asked her to marry him on her birthday. They got married on December 17, 1994 in Montreal, and were together until he died at the age of 73.
"He called me before a show and give me a little message: 'I love you,'" she said. "And when I came home that night, it was very, very late ... And I didn't want to come and wake him up to give him a kiss, to wake him up and then he can't find sleep again. And the next morning, he was gone.”
She Misses Having A Partner
Since her husband's passing, she hasn’t dated anyone but told USA Today that she is open to the idea of loving again, as she misses having someone in her life.
“I don't date. I don't have a boyfriend," she said. "It doesn't mean that I will not find someone in my life. If I do, that would be great. If I don't, that would be great, because I'm still in love."
Dion went on to say that Rene is still with her and that she isn’t ready yet to start seeing someone else, especially when she looks at her children and still sees her husband in them every single day.
"If it happens, I'm not looking for that," she said. "I think it's something that happens that you feel, that comes and you feel. And, right now, if I would have someone in my life I would tell you, because I've been an open book all my life. But if I do, I'll come back, and I'll talk to you about it."
Dion Just Living Her Best Life
Currently, Dion is living life on her own terms, and that means not dating, even when other people say she is dating. In the news last year, it was said she was dating her back-up dancer, Pepe Munoz. Except Dion seemed to squash that rumor when she told Extra that Munoz was Gay. But while they aren’t the traditional couple, it has a lot of people asking if she is in fact seeing him, even though he is gay. But this seems to go along with Dion just living her best life.
"Pepe is like [Dion's] boy toy who is really trying to take over. He's isolating her and people are feeling it,” said a friend close to the singer.
But Dion was quick to brush things aside, saying that Pepe was not her boyfriend and no the two aren’t dating.
“The press said, ‘Oh my God, Rene just passed and now there’s another man,'” she said. “Yeah, there’s another man in my life but not THE man in my life,” said Dion. “We bonded right away as friends, we had a good time. It evolved… But when people started to take pictures and it was like, ‘Who’s that guy? Rene?’ Let’s not mix everything.”
For now, the two remain best friends and nothing more.
