Tom Jones Opens Up About the Death of His Wife

— -- Tom Jones got emotional as he discussed the death of his wife, Melinda Rose Woodward, for the first time in public.

Speaking on stage at the Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, Jones called his final moments with her, "very difficult, the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life."

"We were married for 59 years, we knew each other since we were kids. It was fast, she had cancer," Jones, 76, told British GQ editor Dylan Jones, who conducted the hour-long one-on-one. "I was doing an Asian tour, in the Philippines, and I got the call that it was terminal, my heart stopped. I flew back to Los Angeles, and she had a week left in the hospital."

Woodward died in April at age 75.

The couple first met at age 12 in Sir Tom’s home town of Pontypridd, Wales. They were married at 16 and had one child together, Mark, 59, who now works as the singer's manager.

Fighting back tears, Jones told the audience, "She was always very important to me, she was such a natural person and Welsh, and we grew up together. Our sense of humor was the same, we came from the same town. She’s always been very important to me, throughout my life, now I realize she might be the most important thing in my life. I realize even more now how important she was to me, she still is."

While Jones, famous for his 1965 hit "It's Not Unusual," traveled the world, Woodward was content to remain out of the spotlight.

Jones, who was born Thomas Jones Woodward, shared an anecdote from a time in their 30s when they were hanging out with friends in their home in the U.K.

"She was in there with friends and I might have been getting a bit 'too large,'" he recalled. "I had a glass of champagne, a cigar, and I was like, 'What do you think of my house, and my snooker room?' And she said 'Hey! Hey what are you doing?!' And I said 'I’m just sharing.' And she said, 'You don’t really think you’re Tom Jones do you? I married Tommy Woodward [his birth name], that’s who I married.'"

Despite his reputation for being a ladies' man, Jones said he always knew the marriage would last.

"It was solid, a solid marriage that nothing could shake. That’s how it was," he told the crowd. "I felt very lucky to have fallen in love at an early age, when we were teenagers, and we fell in love, not just in lust. A lot of teenagers do fall in lust, and it doesn’t last. We both knew this was forever, we both knew for as long as we’d be alive."

Despite being unsure whether he could go on performing after his wife's death, Jones insisted he will go ahead with a European tour -- something his wife wanted.

"I have to do it. When Linda passed away, it hit me so hard I didn’t know whether I could or not, I really didn’t," he said. "She said, 'Don’t worry you’ll be alright. Just go forward.'"