John Clarke, the husband of the late RTÉ broadcaster Marian Finucane, has died at the age of 88.
Mr Clarke’s death comes five years after that of his wife who died suddenly in January 2020 before her planned retirement from a broadcasting career stretching back to 1974.
The couple first met when Ms Finucane was a 20-year-old architect and he was 34. After 30 years together, the couple married in 2015.
Mr Clarke, who ran the Irish International advertising agency for 20 years, was diagnosed with cancer in 2023 at the age of 87.
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[ John Clarke on missing his wife Marian Finucane: ‘I didn’t realise how much we chatted’ ]
That same year, he released Finucane & Me: My Life with Marian which was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards.
Speaking of the woman he “loved for 40 years” at her funeral in January 2020, Mr Clarke said his late wife “made the colours brighter” and “the world a bit easier to live in”.
In an interview for an RTÉ documentary a year later, from the home they shared in Kildare, Mr Clarke said he no longer liked radio or television following her death.
“A huge part of my life has gone and a huge part of that for us was talk. Now I sit.
“I don’t think you can explain your grief to anybody. What you see with me now is the tip of the iceberg. You see tears, sorrow and there’s a big lump under that that’s very personal.
“I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t understand it. And I hope that somewhere in that morass is a coping mechanism and I hope to find it. But . . . my tears don’t solve it,” he said.
Mr Clarke is survived by his four children, three sons from his first marriage, Jocelyn, Neil and Timothy, and his son Jack from his marriage to Ms Finucane. Their daughter Sineád died in 1990, aged 8.
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