Nancy Sinatra Sr., first wife of Frank Sinatra, has died

Nancy Sinatra Sr., the first of singer Frank Sinatra’s four wives, has died. She was 101.

Mrs. Sinatra (nee Barbato) and the singer had been teenage sweethearts. They wed in February 1939; the marriage lasted 12 years. The two were parents to three children, the late Frank Sinatra Jr., a singer/musician who toiled in the shadow of his famous father, singer/actress Nancy Sinatra and singer/film producer Tina Sinatra.

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Nancy Sinatra shared the news of her mother’s passing Friday, via Twitter, referring to her mom as “a blessing and the light of my life.”

Frank Sinatra married actress Ava Gardner just weeks after divorcing Nancy. He and Gardner divorced in 1957. He married actress Mia Farrow in 1966; they divorced two years later. Sinatra’s fourth and final wife, Barbara Marx, passed away in 2017. She and Frank had been married for 22 years at the time of his passing in 1998. Nancy Sinatra never remarried.

Attempts to reach representatives for Nancy Sinatra Jr. late Friday were unsuccessful.

Nancy and Frank Sinatra had been dating as teenagers and married at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic church in Jersey City, New Jersey, on Feb. 4, 1939. Three years before marrying the former Nancy Barbato, he had landed a 15-minute radio show on local station WAAT.

During the marriage’s early years, the Sinatras lived in a modest apartment in Jersey City, where their two eldest children were born. For a time she was employed as a secretary while her husband worked as a singing waiter.

After Sinatra became a pop-music sensation in the 1940s, the couple moved to Los Angeles, where the singer would also become a movie star, raconteur, man about town and notorious womanizer.

That latter accomplishment led Sinatra to leave him after an affair with actress Ava Gardner became public knowledge. Weeks after the pair’s divorce became final in 1951, Sinatra’s ex-husband married Gardner, while Sinatra went on to raise the couple’s three children: Nancy, Frank Jr. and Tina.

After the gossip over the divorce and Gardner marriage died down, Nancy Sinatra devoted herself to family and numerous celebrity friends, largely withdrawing from the spotlight. She not only outlived her husband, who died in 1998, but her son, who died in 2016.

She is credited, under the name Nancy Barbato, on the Internet Movie Database with just two TV and film appearances, in her daughter Nancy’s 1975 concert film, “Nancy and Lee in Las Vegas,” and in 1974 on her friend Dinah Shore’s talk show.

In later years she would become known as Nancy Sr., especially after daughter Nancy became a 1960s singing star in her own right with “These Boots Are Made For Walking” and other hit songs.

She also remained friendly with her ex-husband, the latter being said to have put in requests over the years for pasta and other Italian food dishes she was known to be an expert at preparing. She never remarried.

“There is no bitterness, only great respect and affection between Sinatra and his first wife,” Gay Talese wrote in 1966, “and he has long been welcome in her home and has even been known to wander in at odd hours, stoke the fire, lie on the sofa, and fall asleep.”

Contributing: Associated Press