Linda Marigliano opens up about ending her engagement

Linda Marigliano is a radio and television presenter best known for her Tough Love podcast. The 38-year-old opens up about sipping from her Nonno’s wine as a child, her dad doing her hair for the ARIA awards and being apart from her current partner for one-and-a-half years due to COVID lockdowns.

My paternal grandfather, Nonno Salvatore, was a police constable in Italy and served in the army. He migrated to Australia from Campania in the mid-1960s for a better life. He then brought out Nonna Carmelinda, who I am named after, and their three sons. My dad, the middle child, was 11 when he arrived in Sydney.

I remember sitting between Nonno, at the head of the table, and Nonna at meal times – we would visit them four nights a week. Nonno had a funny whistle to get my attention and would allow me to sip a tiny bit of his vino. A fashionable, dapper, proud Italian man who always wore a suit, hat and matching handkerchief, he died of a heart attack in 1999 on the dance floor at his first grandson’s wedding. I was 14 and remember him being taken to the hospital and not coming home.

My maternal grandfather, Gung-Gung Loy Lim, lived in a tiny village in Malaysia. We’d visit him and my grandmother for six to eight weeks at a time in my childhood. He was a cotton and rubber farmer, a little tanned smoker who always grabbed my face. We were half-white and looked different to the others in the village.

My dad, Michele, began hairdressing in Italy before coming to Australia. A family friend had told his parents that if their sons don’t know enough English, they would need to know a trade because they’d struggle at school.

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Dad was a flamboyant hairdresser in Kings Cross in the 1970s; he retired last year, aged 70. He did my hair for every dance, concert and school formal, and when I went to the ARIAs. Until I was in my early teens, he washed and blow-dried my hair in the garage and played records – everything from the Beatles and Rolling Stones to Cream.

Dad was in his early 20s when he met Mum, Janet. She migrated from Malaysia at 18. Her first job was as a waitress at an Italian restaurant 50 metres from Dad’s salon. She’s a glamorous Asian woman with a sharp tongue. Lots of Bee Gees-looking Italian men tried to date her. Dad would dine there alone – he was the nice one, the teddy bear. She met his family and they married soon after.