Why Freddie Mercury’s greatest love was ex fiancée Mary who nursed star on deathbed & inherited HALF of ‘cursed’ fortune
HE was one of the most flamboyant rock stars to have ever lived – and she was just a softly-spoken working-class girl from West London.
But the bond Freddie Mercury shared with ex-fiancée Mary Austin was like no other, despite their engagement coming to an end with the revelation that he was gay.
He continued to describe her as “the love of my life”, and she was the first person he told about his AIDS diagnosis.
Right up until his death aged 45 in 1991, Mary cared for the superstar by his bedside as his life ebbed away.
She then inherited the bulk of his massive fortune – including half of his estate and his lavish 28-bedroom mansion in Kensington.
However, the stunning windfall has since been described as a ‘curse’, with Mary going on to see subsequent relationships crumble, suffer serious illnesses, and navigating a difficult rift with the remaining Queen members.
Living for years surrounded by the ghosts of her memories of him, she eventually decided to put the singer’s memorabilia up for auction in 2023 and put the house on the market in February 2024.
“The time has come for me to take the difficult decision to close this very special chapter in my life,” Mary said at the time.
However, it was revealed this week that Freddie’s sister, Kashmira, secretly spent £3million to snap up many of the items, saddened at the thought of his belongings not being with his loved ones.
For Mary, now 74, it marked the end of an era that in every way was defined by her relationship with the singer – both when he was alive, and after his death.
She was just 19 when she first met a 24-year old Freddie in 1969.
Growing up in a poor household, Mary’s early life was far from easy.
Her father worked as a hand-trimmer for wallpaper specialists, while her mother was a maid in a small firm. Both were deaf, communicating only through sign language and lip reading.
But despite leaving school at 15 without any qualifications, she managed to work her way up to become a PR for the fashionable Biba boutique.
And in the nearby Kensington Market, Freddie and Queen drummer Roger Taylor were running a stall flogging old clothes and the future superstar’s artwork.
“He was like no one I had met before. He was very confident, and I have never been that confident. We grew together – I like him and it went on from there,” she once recalled about meeting him in these early years.
“It took about three years for me to really fall in love. But I had never really felt that way before about anyone.”
Young lovers
Soon they were living together, sharing a cramped flat with another couple, unable to even afford more than one pair of curtains.
In just a couple of years, they’d moved into a larger flat in Holland Road, assisted by the band’s signing of a record deal.
Then, on Christmas Day in 1973, Freddie gifted 23-year-old Mary a jade ring hidden inside a series of boxes.
“I looked at it and was speechless. I remember thinking, ‘I don’t understand what’s going on,’” she said.
“It wasn’t what I’d expected at all. So I asked him, ‘Which hand should I put this on?’ And he said, ‘Ring finger, left hand.’ And then he said, ‘Because, will you marry me?’
“I was shocked. It just so wasn’t what I was expecting. I just whispered, ‘Yes, I will.’”
Star power
From the first time she saw him on stage, Mary recognised that Freddie – with his camp, operatic performances and outrageous outfits – had star power.
But with his fiancée by his side, few suspected where his true sexual feelings lay.
By now, Queen were at the start of their meteoric rise to the top. And Mary, still the shy girl who Freddie first met, could tell something was wrong.
Coming home from work expecting to see Freddie there waiting for her, she would instead find the flat empty – only for her fiancé to come back late in the night.
“He insisted nothing was wrong,” she said. “Then his life rocketed with the success of the first album and the singles. Things were never the same after that.”
He said, ‘I think I’m bisexual’…I told him, ‘I think you’re gay’
Mary Austin
Unsure if marriage was still on the cards, she asked if she should buy a dress – to which he answered no.
Watching young female fans swarm Freddie at their shows, she had always worried that one day she might lose him to another woman. His unusual behaviour only heightened her fears he was cheating.
Burden lifted
But then he made a confession to her that would change their relationship forever.
“He said, ‘I think I’m bisexual,’” she recalled in a rare interview. “I told him, ‘I think you’re gay.’ And nothing else was said. We just hugged.”
“Being a bit naive, it had taken me a while to realise the truth,” she said.
“If he hadn’t been such a decent human being and told me I wouldn’t be here. If he had gone along living a bisexual life without telling me, I would have contracted AIDS and died.”
Speaking on Freddie Mercury: The Untold Story, she added: “I felt like a huge burden had been lifted.
“Once that had been discussed, he was like the person I’d known in the early years.”
With this revelation, Mary knew it was time for her to move out, though Freddie insisted that she stayed nearby.
Now an international superstar, he spared no expense indulging in his desires and enjoying an endless supply of male admirers.
His sex parties became notorious, with nude models walking around with only a hat to hide their modesty, while the singer himself enjoyed consuming copious amounts of cocaine and two bottles of vodka a day.
But despite this sharp split in the ways they lived their lives, Mary and Freddie continued to enjoy a close friendship, living on-and-off with each other for two decades.
When they held dinner parties, Mary would sit on one side of the singer, his latest boyfriend on the other.
He bought her a £300,000 flat to live in, and created a job for her within his music publishing business to ensure they were never too far away from each other.
I couldn’t fall in love with a man the same way as I have with Mary
Freddie Mercury
At one point she is said to have asked Freddie to give her a child, but he told her: “I still love you, but I can’t make love to you.”
While his decadent lifestyle attracted hangers-on after free tickets, drugs and lavish gifts, Mary stood by him, loving him for who he truly was – something that Freddie always understood.
“All my lovers asked me why they couldn’t replace Mary, but it’s simply impossible,” he once revealed in an interview in 1985.
“The only friend I’ve got is Mary, and I don’t want anybody else. I couldn’t fall in love with a man the same way as I have with Mary.”
Inseparable bond
Though Mary enjoyed a relationship with the painter Piers Cameron, who became the father of her two children, the bond she shared with Freddie was irreplaceable. He even taught her first son his very first words – “tractor” and “guitar”.
Overshadowed by the great showman, Nick eventually left.
Meanwhile, Freddie was once again to reveal something to Mary that would alter their lives together.
After being diagnosed with Aids in 1987, Mary was the first person he told – before his bandmates, let alone the general public, who only learnt the truth a day before his death.
Nursing him as his health failed, Mary would sit with Freddie watching footage of his past performances.
Recalling this time, she said: “On one occasion he turned to me and said, ‘To think I used to be so handsome.’ I got up and had to leave the room. It was too upsetting.”
“During those times I did really feel such love for him,” she added.
“I would sit every day next to the bed for six hours, whether he was awake or not. He would suddenly wake up and smile and say, ‘Oh, it’s you, old faithful.’”
When he eventually passed away in November 1991, Mary was by his side, their hands clasped together as she told him how much she loved him.
When he died I felt we’d had a marriage
Mary Austin
Seeing he was too weak to reply, she fled the room in floods of tears.
Freddie’s death left her feeling empty, now living alone in the giant mansion, and it was five years before she could bring herself to sleep again in his bedroom.
Instead, everything sat untouched and unchanged from the day he died.
“When he died I felt we’d had a marriage,” she added.
“We’d lived our vows. We’d done it for better for worse, for richer for poorer. In sickness and in health. You could never had let go of Freddie unless he died. Even then it was difficult.”
Unfilled void
Just months before his death, Freddie signed a will that gave Mary half of his estimated £10million fortune and his 28-bedroom Kensington mansion, filled with valuable art and Louis XV furniture.
Terrified to accept this burden, she initially urged him to let it become a museum.
Meanwhile, his parents and his sister both received a 25 per cent share.
Mary was also entrusted with his ashes – and instructed never to reveal where they would eventually be placed, which would create further rifts with Freddie’s family.
For two years, they sat in a plastic bag inside the urn, before she slipped out of the mansion without her driver to bury them.
Despite rife speculation among fans that they had been buried in a West London cemetery, or under a cherry tree in his mansion’s garden, Mary has remained loyal to his wishes and never revealed his final resting place.
Reclusive life
With Freddie gone, there was now a hole in her life that could never be filled – a later marriage to businessman Nick Holford eventually ending in divorce.
For years, she lived as a recluse behind the high spikes walls of the mansion, keeping to herself and avoiding the fans making pilgrimages.
There was also financial pressure, as it took eight years for her to receive the bulk of what she had been left in his will.
“It was the loneliest and most difficult time of my life after Freddie died,” she later recalled.
I lost my family, really, when Freddie died. He was everything to me
Mary Austin
“I found myself thinking, ‘Oh Freddie, you’ve left me too much and too much to deal with as well.’ I felt I couldn’t live up to it.”
Nor did his former bandmates jump to take her under their wing – reportedly jealous that she had inherited so much – though they have met since.
“I don’t think the remaining members of Queen have ever reconciled themselves to it,” she said in a 2013 interview.
“I don’t understand it. I never hear from them. After Freddie died, they just wandered off.”
Nonetheless, Mary is still able to enjoy the dividends of her relationship with Freddie – receiving royalties from the success of the 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody and the sale of Queen’s back catalogue to Sony.
But nothing could ever come close to replacing the man himself.
She later explained: “I lost my family, really, when Freddie died. He was everything to me, apart from my sons. He was like no one I had ever met before.
“I miss the fun, the humour, his warmth, his energy.”