{"id":558526,"date":"2026-07-20T05:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T05:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/558526\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T05:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T05:48:17","slug":"shania-twain-says-she-wasnt-allowed-to-grieve-after-parents-car-crash-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/558526\/","title":{"rendered":"Shania Twain says she \u2018wasn\u2019t allowed to grieve\u2019 after parents\u2019 car crash death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shania Twain has said she \u201cwasn\u2019t allowed to grieve\u201d after her parents were killed in a car crash.<\/p>\n

The Canadian singer was 22 when her mother, Sharon and stepfather Jerry, who had adopted Twain when she was four, died in a head-on collision with a lorry in 1987.<\/p>\n

At the time, Twain had been living in Toronto and studying computer programming when she got a call from her sister.<\/p>\n

\u201cI collapsed hearing that news over the phone,\u201d she told Lauren Laverne on Desert Island Discs.<\/p>\n

\"TheShania Twain \u2018wasn\u2019t allowed to grieve\u2019 following her parents\u2019 deaths (Ian West\/PA)<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sister called me and I could hear my little brother howling in the background.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following her parents\u2019 death, Twain took on the role of caring for her three younger siblings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe kids could not be separated after that accident \u2013 they had to stay together,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Soon after, Twain became responsible for the family and her parents\u2019 business affairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI leave Toronto of course and am back in the last family home we had that the kids were still living in and moved back in,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy older sister was gone and was married with two children and had her own life in another town. I had to do a lot of things I knew nothing about like take out a second mortgage for the house to sustain what is going to happen next.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twain said she then had to organise selling equipment from her parents\u2019 business and was in lawyers\u2019 offices frequently, navigating insurance affairs as passengers in the vehicle and the lorry driver were suing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were so many complexities to the accident itself. I wasn\u2019t allowed to grieve because I was thrown into this state of guardianship and executor, plus I don\u2019t have a job,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n

\"GrahamThey died in a car crash when she was 22 (Ian West\/ PA)<\/p>\n

After finding a job at a golf resort in a town six hours from their hometown, Twain later moved there with her siblings as it offered them a steady income and allowed her sing.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the radio show, Twain also details her parents\u2019 abusive marriage \u2013 sharing that she felt she had to \u201cprotect\u201d her mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was bad. He would choke her a lot and do things that don\u2019t end well,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Twain would eventually meet and marry record producer Robert John \u201cMutt\u201d Lange.<\/p>\n

They were married in 1993 and had son Eja in 2001, however separated seven years later after he had an affair with her best friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud.<\/p>\n

It was her husband, Frederic Thiebaud, who Twain said alerted her to the affair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know anything that was going on, but he then took the blinders off and told me. I didn\u2019t believe him and told him he was imagining things,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Twain then recalled how they both decided to \u201clet their (marriages go)\u201d.<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cAnd in that time we found each other. I found out what a beautiful person he was.\u201d<\/p>\n

She then said that she would \u201ctreat him better\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"ShaniaTwain has had three number one albums (Ian West\/ PA)<\/p>\n

Twain and Thiebaud then married in 2011.<\/p>\n

The five-time Grammy-winning Twain has had nine UK top 10 singles including You\u2019re Still The One, From This Moment On and Don\u2019t Be Stupid.<\/p>\n

She has also had three number one albums including 1998\u2019s Come On Over, 2017\u2019s Now, and 2023\u2019s Queen Of Me.<\/p>\n

The full Desert Island Discs episode can be listened to on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4 from Sunday at 10am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shania Twain has said she \u201cwasn\u2019t allowed to grieve\u201d after her parents were killed in a car crash.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60],"class_list":["post-558526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}