In 1977, Ron Wilson sold everything he owned to buy a plane ticket, flying from Sydney to London to confess his undying love to his friend, now wife, Helen.
“She wasn’t really interested – she had a boyfriend and they were planning to travel around Europe together,” recalls the legendary Ten newsreader, who made his romantic gesture two months after meeting Helen.
“We were at a coffee shop and she was doing her best to let me down gently.”
“So I presented her with this long letter on the back of a serviette and left it there. I said, ‘If you change your mind you know where I am’.”
“And we’ve been together ever since!”
Their love spans nearly four decades.
Almost 40 years and three children later, the TV- turned-Smooth-FM-radio newsreader, 65, is still as besotted with Helen as he was then, which makes him all the more determined to help her battle the cancer she’s fought for four years.
Helen was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) in 2012. It’s the same type of tumour that Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously died from in 2011.
There are two main forms of the cancer: one a large tumour, the other a spotty rash that is almost impossible to find with normal testing. Helen tragically has both.
Choking up, he tells us, “She rarely talks about it and she tackles life as it comes, but she was in intensive care a long time.”
Pick up a copy of Woman’s Day to see how Ron and their kids have rallied behind Helen, plus see the couple’s incredible shoot with the magazine, on stands now!
Ron, snapped with fellow Ten hosts Natasha Bellings and Tracey Spicer, is an Australian treasure.
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