Sam Newman shares new details and emotions over wife’s shock death

Radio and television personality Sam Newman has described the harrowing experience of giving his wife Amanda CPR after discovering her lifeless body in their Melbourne apartment on Saturday, going on to share a heartfelt tribute to the woman who “caught my eye and, above all, caught my heart”.

Sam, 75, and Amanda, 50, had spent 20 years together but had only been married for six months when she suffered a cardiac arrest and died on Saturday evening.

Sam spoke openly about his heartache on his You Cannot Be Serious podcast on Tuesday. Here, he explained how he’d tried to ring his wife six times to invite her to dinner but had no answer, going on to describe the horror of coming home to find Amanda’s “peaceful” body and knowing she was dead.

“[I’m] not sure that things prepare you for … I’ve never experienced what I’ve experienced in the last few days,” an emotional Sam said. “As soon as I saw her, I knew she was dead. I just knew it. So I rang triple-zero and the very helpful person on the end said you better try to give CPR, and she talked me through that and I had the phone on speakerphone and I’m pumping this poor woman who’s lying there looking so peaceful [and] — obviously to me — dead.

“But the operator said [to] just keep doing it in case there’s a spark of life in her. So I did that for 20 minutes, giving CPR to what I knew was a corpse.”

After the ordeal, Sam said he curled into Amanda’s side of the bed. Lying awake for hours, he finally got up and penned a final tribute to his wife. On the podcast, Sam read his heartbreakingly raw words.

“It’s been 24 hours since I arrived home and found dear Amanda lying on her side on the tiles beside the laundry. She looked so gentle and calm and innocent but somehow I knew instantly she was dead,” he said. “So why am I writing this? Maybe it’s cathartic or maybe I want to share what a relationship means to me because at 75 years of age it has taken three-quarters of a century to discover the formula.

“I’ve married and loved a number of women, and for extended periods of time have enjoyed a harmonious existence with them all but sadly not an everlasting one, obviously. The reason they did not endure are complex yet so simple. Relentlessness, tension, ego, simmering angst and above all stubbornness to yield.

“In her 20s, Amanda’s mission in life was for me to be her man. She told the person she lived with, a boy, as much. I kept noticing her the same places I was at and enjoyed her company. I thought it was just a coincidence but it wasn’t — she wanted me. I knew exactly where she came from and what she did and while my friends were somewhat bemused, my friends are real friends, unconditional.

“For the last 15 years we lived together and had not one verbal or physical confrontation. Some strong words occasionally, for sure, but she had the knack of not prolonging such rifts due to her innate nature of compromise.

“I have never been happier [than] in the last decade, and arriving home at the end of a day was such a genuinely pleasant thing I looked forward to, as there was never any harbouring of angst pent up in either of us.”

Sam then spoke about marrying Amanda on November 20 last year and said he’d never seen someone so proud to be his wife. “She was loyal and loving, concerned and protective, and as strong-willed as any person I’ve ever met. I will always love her for what she was and who she was,” he said.

“An adage I’ve cited often when people face adversity is never cry over things that can’t cry over you. I’ve cried a lot over Amanda Newman. Finally, another adage I value: there are many things in life that catch your eye but only a few things catch your heart, pursue those. Amanda Newman certainly caught my eye and, above all, she caught my heart.”