Rugby league great Wally Lewis marries his partner of four years Lynda Adams in Brisbane
Queensland rugby league great Wally Lewis has married his partner of four years Lynda Adams in Brisbane.
The NRL Hall of Famer, former Kangaroo Test captain and 'Immortal' exchanged wedding vows with Adams, a freelance writer and volunteer worker, at a private ceremony at the city's iconic heritage-listed St Mary's Anglican Church, Kangaroo Point, at 4.30pm Saturday.
Conspicuously absent from the celebrations were Lewis's three adult children from his first marriage, sons Mitchell and Lincoln and daughter Jamie-Lee.
The three are said to have declined their father's wedding invitation out of loyalty to their mother, Jackie, whose separation from the man Queenslanders call 'The King' in 2021 shattered the family.
Adams' teenage daughter, Sydney, attended the wedding along with some 40 of the couple's friends and members of their extended families.
The 50-something-year-old bride wore a cream feathered chiffon gown and carried cream chrysanthemums while the 65-year-old groom was outfitted in a black suit with a cream rose in his buttonhole.
Standing up for Lewis as his best man was fellow Brisbane Broncos league star and retired Kangaroo Gene Miles who played football alongside the groom in the eighties and early nineties.
Paul 'Fatty' Vautin, long time presenter of The Footy Show, and wife Kim were also among guests.
After the ceremony, wedding guests were transported by coach to Brisbane's nearby Old Government House for the reception.
Lewis' separation from his wife of 36 years shocked family, friends and colleagues alike when the announcement came – strangely and excruciatingly through his then employer Nine – in February 2021.
'I want to acknowledge the pain and upset my family has gone through since Jacqui and I separated last year. I hope over time we can rebuild our ties and move on with life,' Lewis said in 2021.
The statement went on: 'It has been a difficult time for everyone in the family and they are still working through the details of the separation.'
For almost four decades, the Lewis marriage had been considered the gold standard of sports-star marriages.
Having fallen in love with Jackie, at first sight, at a birthday party in 1983 and endured her rejections, the young Jacqueline Green eventually followed the league star to the UK after he was picked up by English club Wakefield for the off season, and accepted his Christmas marriage proposal.
Lewis would credit Jackie with being a 'tower of strength' throughout his long career, most notably when he departed the Broncos in 1990 a year after being stripped of the captaincy, after he was sacked as coach of Queensland's State of Origin team in 1994 and when he was diagnosed with epilepsy in his twenties, a condition that would give way to depression.
Having dedicated his biography, My Life, to Jackie and his children in December 2020, news of the couple's separation two months later devastated the family.
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