Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson Announces Death of Wife Melinda at Age 77: ‘My Anchor’

Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys is grieving the loss of his wife, Melinda Kae Ledbetter, whom he married in 1995. The iconic pop star took to Instagram on Tuesday, January 30, 2024, to pay tribute to Melinda and remember her as his “savior.” “My heart is broken. Melinda, my beloved wife of 28 years, passed away this morning,” Brian, 81, captioned a black and white portrait of Melinda, along with a photo of the couple together. “Our five children and I are just in tears. We are lost.
Melinda was more than my wife. She was my savior. She gave me the emotional security I needed to have a career.
She encouraged me to make the music that was closest to my heart. She was my anchor. She was everything for us. Please say a prayer for her,” Brian signed off the post with “Love and Mercy, Brian.”

No other information on Melinda’s death was immediately available, but the couple’s children also included a statement saying she died “peacefully” Tuesday morning. Brian and Melinda adopted five children during their marriage — daughters Daria, Delanie, and Dakota, and sons Dylan and Dash. 

“It is with a heavy heart that we let everyone know that our mom, Melinda Kay Ledbetter Wilson passed away peacefully this morning at home,” the Wilson children wrote. “She was a force of nature and one of the strongest women you could come by. She was not only a model, our fathers savior, and a mother, she was a woman empowered by her spirit with a mission to better everyone she touched. We will miss her but cherish everything she has taught us. How to take care of the person next to you with out expecting anything in return, how to find beauty in the darkest of places, and how to live life as your truest self with honesty and pride,” they wrote, finishing their statement with, “we love you, mom.”

Brian and the blonde beauty, a former model, married in 1995 after a lengthy courtship that began back in 1986, when Melinda was working at an auto dealership in Los Angeles. “I remember meeting her at her dealership, Cadillac, and I said, ‘God, she’s a pretty girl,’” Brian later said during a 2015 ABC Nightline interview. “‘That’s a pretty girl.’” He added, “I just said to myself, ‘God, I think I’ll see her again sometime.’” Melinda said Brian’s kind nature drew her in.  “That’s what attracted me to him, he was so nice,” she said.