Simon Barnett with his wife Jodi at their daughter Sophie's wedding in 2018.
Radio and TV star Simon Barnett’s beloved wife Jodi has died.
She passed away peacefully at the couple’s Christchurch home early on Monday – with the devastated broadcaster and family at her side – following a five-and-a-half-year battle with brain cancer.
“We are absolutely heartbroken that our beautiful wife and mother, Jodi, passed away in the early hours of Monday morning,” the Barnett family said in a statement on Tuesday.
“We are completely broken but trust she is now walking and talking freely with our heavenly Dad.
“Words cannot adequately convey how deeply loved she was by us, and all who knew her.”
The 61-year-old wife, mother and grandmother – she and Barnett have been married 32 years and have four daughters and three grandchildren – had undergone four brain surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatment since April 2018, when she suffered a seizure out of the blue at the couple’s home.
Her fourth and most recent surgery was in January.
Barnett’s Newstalk ZB colleague, Breakfast host Mike Hosking, choked back tears as he relayed the news to his listeners this morning. “Obviously for us, it’s a very sad day. All our love and all our thoughts and all our prayers go to Simon and his family.”
In an interview with the NZ Herald, published just three days ago, Barnett described Jodi as his “perfect soulmate” and “greatest cheerleader” who had defied odds all the way.
But he also revealed that doctors had given Jodi just weeks to live: “Things are grim now.”
Barnett said the best moments of his life were when he was with Jodi and their four daughters, Samantha, Sophie, Bella and Lily, who are all now in their 20s.
Jodi, he said, was the very embodiment of “kindness and selflessness”.
Revealing how they met “accidentally” on the Mt Hutt skifield in 1988 – when the then What Now TV host spotted her having trouble on one of the lifts – Barnett said he had never been loved “like the way she loves me”.
“Her whole mission in life was to be the best mum she could be and the best wife that she could be,” Barnett said. “And if you look at her life – by any measure of success – she completely exceeded that.”
Barnett, the host of Newstalk ZB’s Afternoons show, told the Herald that his faith had led him to believe Jodi would “get through this – and she did every time”.
“But of course, more recently, I’ve realised that we are really in a battle.”
He said his wife had not once cried about her predicament.
“She’s not the toughest woman I know, I don’t qualify that. She’s the toughest person I know.
“I’ve cried bucket loads. When I’m showering her and massaging her legs I just cry.
“I’m holding her legs and her feet and just looking at this girl, just my beautiful wife, and saying, ‘I just want you forever and ever’.”
Barnett added that he was at his wife’s side constantly. “I just don’t want my wife to ever feel a moment where I’m not there. So all through the night, I just touch her hand and say I’m here.”
After Jodi developed a life-threatening brain bleed soon after her first operation in 2018, one of the couple’s daughters, Sophie, turned to Barnett in hospital.
“She said, ‘Dad, I just don’t want to live in a world without Mum’,” a tearful Barnett told the Herald. “And that’s so what I felt, I just didn’t want to live and don’t want to live in a world without Mum.”
Barnett told the Herald his life would never be the same.
“I sound like I am hero-worshipping her, but the fact is, she is my hero.
“I’ve said to her multiple times in the past five years and even though she can’t respond, ‘I’m simply in awe of you’.”
Barnett said his bond with Jodi had only strengthened during her illness.
“As if it were possible, I love her more deeply now than I ever have at any time in our marriage. I mean, so many things have changed, but I just love her now more deeply, more intently than I ever have at any point in 32 years.
“So many people have said you’ve just got a genuine love story.
“Unfortunately, it’s just got such a tragic end and I never saw it. I just never saw this.
“But as the Bible says, love never gives up, love never loses faith, love is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”
Details of Jodi’s service will be shared in the coming days, the Barnetts said in the statement today.
