Gary Speed’s widow, Louise, has found love again with a wealthy property developer two years after the death of her second husband. She and new boyfriend Andrew Dickens have also gone into business together by opening a property development firm.
Louise’s life turned upside down in 2011 when she found the body of her first husband, Premier League legend and former Wales manager Gary Speed, in the garage of their Cheshire home. The pair were childhood sweethearts and had two sons together, Eddie and Tommy.
She remarried in 2021 but her second husband, Quinton Bird, who was also a property developer, tragically died from an aggressive brain tumour only six months after the ceremony.
Louise’s relatives are delighted that she has now coupled up with new partner Andrew, who she lives with in North Wales.
“Louise and Andrew have been together a while now,” one family member told The Daily Mail. “She has moved into his place in Wales. They are currently on holiday together in the South of France. They make a lovely couple.”
Andrew himself added: “Funnily enough we are from the same small village in North Wales and only lived a few hundred yards from each other. It was only in recent years that we became good friends.”
Louise previously admitted that she went through spells of ‘struggling to get off the sofa’ after the death of her first husband Gary. “It was like being in the worst nightmare possible,” she explained.
“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.”
Only five players have racked up more Premier League appearances than Speed, who featured for Leeds United, Everton, Newcastle United, Bolton Wanderers and Sheffield United before calling time on his career in 2010.
Speed went on to take charge of the Welsh national team, with his final game at the helm taking place just two weeks before he was found dead. New Wales boss Craig Bellamy is sure that his legacy will live on in football.
“I always wonder how he would have done certain things,” he said. “I hope the players feel like I felt when he was first in charge. That sense of ‘we’re going to do something here’ because that’s how I honestly felt. I hope they get that and I hope I was able to relay some of the messages he was able to relay to us as a group.”
