Bird left his family with ‘a wealth of beautiful and extraordinary memories’.
Gary Speed’s widow Louise has lost her second husband after a two-year battle with brain cancer. After Gary took his own life in November 2011 age 42, Louise found love again with Quinton Bird, 53. The two married in December 2021, ten years after the ex-Leeds and Newcastle star’s passing.
The two wed at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire, with former Newcastle and England striker Alan Shearer – a close friend and former team-mate of Gary – in attendance.
The Mirror reported that Bird succumbed to an aggressive form of brain tumour last year – a condition he had been battling for two years.
Bird’s father, Roy, said he was “devastated” to lose his son “at such a young age is beyond words”, the publication reported and added that his son was a “wonderful” father and the entire family “had been left with a wealth of beautiful and extraordinary memories”.
Bird had three children.
Louise and Bird had been business partners for six years and were both directors of new build and renovation company Bow Property Development in Chester.
Speed had suffered from depression throughout his adult life and wrote a letter expressing suicidal thoughts as a 17-year-old but never sent it.
The footballer and Louise married in 1996 and had two children together having met when they were just 15.
Speaking in November 2021, Louise said her husband’s death was like “being in the worst nightmare possible”.
“There were no answers and no Gary walking through the door again. Nothing was ever going to be right again. I was trudging through life, just functioning. If I could have been anybody else apart from me, for a long time, I would have happily taken it.
“But we are 10 years on now. It’s a cliche but time is a healer even if it takes years. I have learned that life can be good again, can be great again.”
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