Celine Dion Cancels Tour Due To Husband Health

 

Celine Dion has canceled her Las Vegas shows and upcoming Asian tour to focus on the health of her family.

Her husband, Renee Angelil, 72, had surgery in December to remove a cancerous tumor. In June, he stepped down from his role as her manager to deal with his health problems.

The iconic singer explained the heartbreaking situation in a statement to ABC News, sharing:

“I want to devote every ounce of my strength and energy to my husband’s healing, and to do so, it’s important for me to dedicate this time to him and to our children,” she explained. “I also want to apologize to all my fans everywhere, for inconveniencing them, and I thank them so much for their love and support.”

Dion, 46, has not been without health problems herself, suffering from an inflammation in her throat that has kept her from performing since late June.

“It’s been a very difficult and stressful time for the couple as they deal with the day-to-day challenges of fighting [Angelil's] disease while trying to juggle a very active show business schedule, and raise their three young children,” Dion’s rep told ABC News in a statement.

Sadly, this is not Angelil’s first bout with cancer. He was first diagnosed with throat cancer in 1999, which he initially beat.

Dion first met her husband and manager in 1980, when she was 12 and he was 38, after she and her mother sent him a demo tape of a song they had written. They began a relationship in 1987, and became engaged in 1991. They married on 17 December 1994.

In May 2000, Dion had two small operations at a fertility clinic in New York to improve her chances of conceiving, after deciding to use in-vitro fertilisation due to years of failed attempts to conceive. Their first son, René-Charles Angelil, was born on 25 January 2001. In May 2010, Angelil announced that Dion was 14 weeks pregnant with twins after a sixth treatment of in-vitro fertilisation. On Saturday, 23 October 2010, at 11:11 and 11:12 am respectively, at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, Dion, by Caesarean section, gave birth to healthy fraternal twins.