Melia McEnery is the beautiful wife of 17-time Grammy-winning and three-time Rock n Roll Hall of Fame inductee English-born guitarist and singer-songwriter, Eric Clapton.
She is an American-born graphic artist of Korean-Irish parentage. Melia was born on the 1st of February, 1976. She is currently 49 years old.
How did she meet her future husband?
Melia first met Clapton in 1998 at a party in Columbus, Ohio.
She was at the promotional event to promote his 1999 guitar auction held by Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani for whom she was working as an administrative assistant.
She asked for his autograph at the event. Melia, at the time, was just 22, and Clapton was 53.
The couple later started dating secretly for a year before going public in 1999. They got married in 2002 at St.Mary Magdalene Church in Clapton’s birthplace, Ripley.
The song “Believe in Life” was about her.
Clapton’s Song “Believe in Life “ from his 2001 studio album Reptile was released as a promotional single in 2001. It was the song written for her.
In an interview with Uncut Magazine in 2014, Clapton said he is proud of that song and that his heartfelt declaration of Love is one of the best tunes he has ever recorded, and also it is still his favorite song because he wrote about his wife.
She is the first of Clapton’s partners whom he has been completely faithful to
Claption’s past relationships and his marriage to English model and photographer Pattie Boyd were fueled by addiction and infidelity.
He first dated British aristocrat Alice Ormsby-Gore. Both were addicted to heroin. They parted ways in 1974 after dating for three years. He briefly dated funk singer Betty Davis.
Clapton then laid eyes on Pattie Boyd, who at the time was married to George Harrison, with whom he collaborated. Despite knowing they were married, he fell for her.
His deeply heartfelt and revealing letters, while she was married to Harrison, were later sold at the auction. Clapton was dating Boyd’s sister Paula, but he was insisting that Boyd run away with him.
Boyd said Clapton repeatedly asking her to run away with him was tempting, but she couldn’t do it. It just wasn’t right.
Boyd and Harrison divorced in 1977 due to his multiple infidelities.
Two years later, Boyd and Clapton got married in Tucson, Arizona. But their marriage was marred by infidelities and domestic violence, which he admitted in an interview with The Sunday Times.
While he was married to Boyd, he had a relationship with Yvonne Kelly, the manager of AIR Studios Montserrat, with whom he had a daughter, Ruth Kelly.
He also had an affair with Italian model Lory Del Santo, with whom he had a son, Conor.
Clapton, in an interview with The Sunday Times, admitted to being a full-blown alcoholic, that it had a devastating effect on his marriage to Boyd, while revealing he beat Boyd and took sex by force several times, thinking he was entitled to it.
He also said that the pressure of being a musician led to his addiction to drinking. The couple ended in divorce in 1989 after a decade of marriage.
Despite the 31-year age gap between Melia and Clapton, the couple is still living a blissful marital life since their marriage in 2002.
Clapton stated in an interview that Melia is the first of Clapton’s partners he is completely faithful to. The couple shares three daughters: Julie Rose, born in June 2001, Ella Mae, born in 2003, and Sophie Belle.
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The tragic death of Clapton’s son
Clapton’s son Conor, whom she shared with model Lory Del Santo, tragically died after falling out of an open bedroom window of a New York Apartment building on the 20th of March 1991.
Conor, at the time, was four. In an interview, Clapton recalled the devastating moment when he got the call from Conor’s mom saying their son was no more.
According to him, Conor’s mom was rarely making sense, but did say Conor was dead. He then hung up the phone and calmly walked from his hotel to that place as if nothing had happened.
He said he will forever have the guilt of not running to see him, but he neither could run nor had the guts to see his son at the time.
Having to lose a son whom he loved so much took him a long time to heal. It was music that helped him cope with the loss somehow. His song “Tear in Heaven” is written about Conor’s death.
