It’s the joy-filled sound of a blended family, brought back together. And it brings the warmest of smiles to the popular Brisbane breakfast radio presenter’s face.

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“I love this,” she says, looking around at her three sons – Fin, 20, Lewin, 18, and Piper, 15 – and stepdaughter Ally, 27.

As the sun sets, turning the river below to a peachy orange, the boys are gathered around the dinner table sharing snacks and jokes with Ally, who is visiting from Sydney.

Now that her children are growing older and getting on with their own lives, it’s a rare treat to have them together in one room like this.

This is the place where, less than one year ago, they had all come together to farewell Bailey’s soulmate and Ally’s dad, Sean Pickwell, as he succumbed to liver cancer.

On that day, and the days preceding it, they had gathered - including Pickwell’s son Jamie, 23 – to be by his side and to say their goodbyes.

The 56-year-old, who was diagnosed in 2017 and told his cancer was terminal in 2018, died at home in September with those he loved the most holding him.

His death came just six days after Bailey finished presenting on Triple M’s The Big Breakfast to spend more time with the man she loved.

The devoted couple had married in an emotional ceremony in northern New South Wales less than a year earlier, after three years of dating.

“When I left Triple M, I genuinely walked out of that building thinking I was just going to became Sean’s wife – (but I got) six bloody days. We thought he’d make it through to Christmas,” Bailey says, her voice cracking with emotion, not for the first time during our interview.

Bailey’s life has been punctuated by loss.

As a child, the sudden death of a much-loved father, Peter Bailey. ‘As a mother, the shock loss of the father of her three boys, Tony Smart, to suicide. And as a wife, the loss of a soulmate, Sean Pickwell, to cancer.

Stuart Diver is arguably the only other person in Australia with anything close to a shared experience of losing two partners, so publicly.

The Thredbo survivor lost his first wife Sally in the landslide in 1997, and his second wife Rosanna died from breast cancer in 2015.

Bailey doesn’t carry the sorrow from those losses lightly.

Speaking to Qweekend 10 months on from losing Sean, her “panda”, the pain and grief are still intensely raw.

The 97.3FM host admits she spent a chunk of her recent holidays on the Gold and Sunshine coasts alone and reflecting on the new and uncertain direction her life had taken.

At the same time last year, she had been with Pickwell on a bucket list trip to Europe as his health took a sharp decline.

“It’s really hard,” she says, breaking down in tears.

“The overall emotion is just really sad – everyone else gets on with their lives and you go from desperately trying to hold on … to this grieving of my life with him, his life with my kids and my life with his kids and friends. People kind of go back to their corners but he was my whole life and I fought so hard to keep him alive that, now, my whole world is having to reinvent itself.”

Losing Sean was gut-wrenching, but peaceful in its own way, she says.

He was in his home, with the people he loved, and everything that needed to be said was said.

He slowly withdrew and came to terms with his own mortality, but she says those final days at home – supported by Karuna Hospice Services – were special and filled with love.

His death was such a contrast to the loss of her first husband Tony Smart in 2014.

When Smart died, she felt she shouldered some of the blame and tortured herself for the part she could have played in it.

“There was so much angst and anger around Tony’s death and there wasn’t around Sean’s and that was so important for my kids to see,” she says.

“That (Tony’s death) was traumatic – this is grief.

“It’s so awful that I have something to compare it to, but this time it’s so much worse, so much more painful.’’

Bailey and Smart had been in the process of separating after almost 16 years of marriage when he died.

The day started out like any other Monday, with Bailey returning home from work on her popular breakfast show alongside Terry and Bob to discover their family’s world had been turned upside down.

She was devastated for her boys and spent the ensuing weeks and months consumed by guilt and dealing with repeated shocks, including the dire state of their finances.

“I just hammered myself after Tony died – I felt such guilt, I felt so sad and I punished myself,” she says.

“Of course, I was a contributing factor around Tony (dying) but I don’t take responsibility because, if I did, what does that say to my kids?”

Bailey’s youngest, Piper Smart, wasjust nine when he lost his dad. Lewin was 12 and Fin was 14.

As a newly widowed mother, she became even more fiercely protective of her boys.

Bailey didn’t realise it at the time, but the experience of losing her own father Peter suddenly at the age of 11 prepared her in ways she could never have anticipated to help her kids through their loss.

Her dad, a “proud cricket lover” with a history of heart problems, suffered a fatal heart attack while watching The Ashes on television late one night as Bailey and her sister Pippa, then 13, slept in the next room.

Mercifully, they did not wake to the commotion of their mother Julie running to get help from the neighbours, the arrival of the ambulance nor the paramedics working on him for 40 minutes. He was 56, the same age as Pickwell when he died.

“So he put us to bed and mum woke us up and said ‘he’s died’,” Bailey says. “I remember it like it was yesterday, I remember the feeling and I can remember just looking at her (mum) going ‘what do you mean, what are you talking about?’. At that moment, I was so bewildered.”

Bailey recalls turning to the head of paediatric psychology at South Brisbane’s Mater Hospital for guidance on how to help her children in the weeks after Tony’s death.

“He said ‘I can give you every clinical study known to man but nothing will be as valuable as what you know it felt like, than what you know innately from your experience. So, if you have a gut feeling on something, go with your gut’,” she says.

“I think you are the sum total of your life experiences and that, having that happen to me as a child, helped me so much with my boys … To be able to know what that was like.”

Her father’s death forged an “absolute undying love” between Bailey, Pippa and mum Julie, now 85, who has been a guiding light for Bailey through the loss of these three men in her life.

Bailey describes her hardworking mum, herself the product of a single mum, as having been “just everything” when she was growing up – a feeling she is coming “full circle” with as her mum gets older.

Bailey says her mum has always been good at just sitting with her in her grief.

“She just understood – any single parent knows the difficulty and she just validated that it’s hard,” Bailey says.

Julie still lives in Sydney in the house Bailey grew up in, with her partner of 25 years – also called Robin.

Bailey admits that, when her mum came out to her during her teenage years, she didn’t handle it “overly well”.

For someone who had already lost a parent, it felt like she was losing another.

“It wasn’t anything to do with the fact that she was gay, it was the fact that I was going to be losing my mum to a partner,” she says.

“You know, I was a narcissistic 19 year old, it was all about me. But, having said that, it didn’t take me too long to get it together, but I remember walking out and just needing time to think. Knowing me, I probably went for a run.”

Bailey has always used exercise as an outlet. But looking back at photos taken in the wake of Smart’s death, she admits she became “skeletal”.

She says she was so sick and “really broken” that a cut to her foot in 2015 became severely infected and compromised her organs, with doctors telling her they may have to amputate, because she hadn’t been looking after herself.

“For a couple of hours there they were saying to me, ‘If we can’t get this under control you’ll lose your foot’ and it was because I’d starved myself, I’d run myself to the (ground) … I had such shame about the part I played in Tony’s death and just had the feeling I’d failed,” she says.

When Bailey woke up from surgery on her foot, it was Pickwell standing at her bedside.

The pair had first met some 25 years earlier working at Melbourne’s Fox FM, where he was nothing more than “a kind guy” and the station’s program director.

She was a fledgling producer, who he went on to help find her first breakfast radio gig in Hobart.

“There was not even an inkling of a feeling when I met him the first time,” Bailey says.

But, in an extraordinary twist of fate, the pair – who had seen each other at a handful of industry gigs throughout the years – ran into each other at a 97.3FM function on the eve of the first anniversary of Tony’s death.

Pickwell, who was recently divorced and visiting from Sydney, and Bailey ended up chatting for hours about work, life and loss.

“At the end of the night he said, ‘I’m just going to say this as someone who knew you: from tomorrow, you’ve got to stop having Tony’s death define you, you now need to step into your own path and be that person’, and it was just what I needed to hear in that moment,” Bailey says.

But their romance was a slow burn. They were back in contact as mates and he was “pretty keen” but a relationship wasn’t on Bailey’s radar.

But she says waking up to the “man with a big heart” after surgery months later was “the tipping point”.

“I was like, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ and he wasn’t my boyfriend or anything like that and he just said, ‘You just needed someone to be here’,” she says, through tears.

“Sean healed me in so many ways, he loved me so hard and he believed in me.”

A kind and gentle but “strong, powerful male influence” in her sons’ lives, Bailey says Pickwell also helped heal the boys, who each had his own pain to work through after losing their dad.

“The things that happened with their father weren’t their fault but, of course, they think that,” Bailey says.

“Their dad passionately loved them, he really did, he was a great dad.”

She says her boys, through their experience, have developed incredible resilience and empathy. “Kids are so much more resilient than we ever give them credit for,” she says.

“As long as I live, they are not to use what’s happened to them as an excuse, not ever. It won’t help you in life. Yeah, this is pretty shit but, you know what, it’s given them an understanding of grief, a compassion for other people’s suffering and a respect.

“I heard from their school that the boys are often the sounding board for other kids who are going through stuff because my kids don’t baulk, they don’t push away when someone’s saying they’re having a hard time. That’s the capacity that grief can give you. So, I think they’ll go on to do amazing things.”

Bailey has always been adamant she would never speak on behalf of her boys, having said they would tell their own stories when they were ready.

Speaking to Qweekend in their first interview, Fin, Lewin and Piper describe their mum as someone who has always protected them, even when she is hurting too.

They are boys that clearly adore their mum, coming over throughout the day as we’re talking to ruffle her hair or place a hand on her shoulder.

“Mum’s always trying to be the one that’s the strongest so she can be help us but she also needs help,” Piper says.

“She cries a lot … she needs, not help, but like she needs someone to be there for support. And we try to do that as much as we can, but she just also tries to hide it as much as she can.’’

As well as supporting their mother, the boys have been a wonderful support to each other through the challenges of the past six years.

“I feel like when dad passed especially, and I don’t want to speak for (Fin), but he stepped up as our brother, and he was also someone to look up to as well,’’ Piper says.

“He also tried to be that role model towards us and he obviously is.’’

The boys say their bond with Pickwell’s family, including Ally, was “instant”.

Following Pickwell’s diagnosis and operation to remove 40 per cent of his liver in 2017, Ally says his illness sped up and cemented the bond between the families.

Pickwell, who had moved from Sydney to Brisbane to live with Bailey in May 2018, married Bailey in November with their children by their side.

“My heart just breaks into a thousand pieces for the amount of trauma that Rob’s entire family has gone through,’’ Ally says.

“I remember the day that we found out it (the cancer) was worse than it initially seemed, all I could think was, ‘Not this family, this is not fair’. But I know Rob holds a lot of faith and belief in the idea that she was brought into his life to push him and drive him and guide him through this process and I completely support that. You don’t know anyone who has lost two husbands – it’s horrific but she’s an incredibly strong, kind, empathetic woman.”

Bailey says her spirituality has helped her through the toughest of times over the past six years, ensuring she has maintained her sense of positivity and hope. Having been part of a meditation circle for the better part of 30 years, she says that practice helped her in Pickwell’s final days.

“Spirituality is about connecting to something higher than you, doing the right thing and being kind and generous,” she says.

“I truly believe that love is greater than all of us – it’s such a cliche but that’s what survives.’’

Before his death, Bailey asked Pickwell how she would know he was around her after he passed. He said he would come back as a kookaburra, just like a dear friend she had lost to cancer years earlier.

“For the first month, there were two kookaburras hanging out on the balcony. Was that Sean? No, but it was comfort – all you can ask for is a sign,” she says.

After sending Pickwell off with a big party – just as he wanted – Bailey whisked Fin, Lewin and Piper away to India to reconnect as a family and help navigate her way through the grief.

While she had set herself up financially for a year off from work, Bailey realised she would have to reconsider the direction she now wanted her life to go in.

A serendipitous opportunity to reunite with her former radio co-hosts Terry Hansen and Bob Gallagher for 97.3FM’s breakfast show felt like exactly where she needed to be. Work, in Bailey’s family, has always provided a sense of normality.

“Work has been my saving grace,” she says.

The decision to reinstate her was a stunning backflip by the station, who had previously “blindsided” Bailey by sacking her when contract negotiations broke down in 2016, just after the top-rating trio had celebrated 10 years on air together.

In January, she joined Bob Gallagher back on air, with Bailey replacing her successor Bianca Dye and Terry Hansen returning in place of comedian Mike van Acker.

“I used to think, when I was younger, that (getting axed) is the worst thing that could ever happen to you,” she says, with a laugh. “The small stuff just does not upset me anymore.”

She says the station and her old colleagues, who supported her through Smart’s death, felt like a safe place after Pickwell’s death.

“I think now I’m pretty lonely and it’s nice to be at a place where people get you and protect you and care about you,’’ she says.

Bailey says grieving during a global pandemic has been tough but, with the COVID-19 crisis, she feels the whole world has now caught up with how she was feeling.

“You feel out of control, you feel that things are happening that you can’t do anything about, that you don’t know what the future’s going to look like,” she says.

Close friend and the show’s executive producer Ruth De Glas, who was sacked alongside Bailey and returned to the station with her this year, has seen her through losing both of her husbands.

She was the one who drove car loads full of flowers from listeners to Bailey’s house after Smart died, and earned herself the nickname “fox terrier” for how fiercely she protected Bailey during that time.

De Glas says she has been stumped by the “injustice” of Bailey being given such little time with the love of her life, and says Bailey’s strength and enduring positivity has never ceased to amaze her.

“She has an ability to find the positive in the most challenging by stepping back and looking at it in a different way. I say this unreservedly: she is one of the most thoughtful, kind and generous people I’ve ever met,’’ she says.

While Bailey is not yet sure what the next chapter of her life looks like, of a few things she is certain: her work in radio will be part of it but she wants to find her “purpose” and a way to use her experiences to help others.

She says she is focused on herself and her children and finds the “expectation” that she should re-partner unsettling.

“What I need to do now is find where I’m supposed to be next because it’s not going to be finding love. I found it. I’m all good, it’s all in here,” she says, pointing to her heart. “It hasn’t gone away’’.

“I can’t even tell you the number of people that say to me, ‘Oh you’ll find someone else,’ and it’s like, ‘Why do I have to?’ Celine Dion said it best when she said, ‘I’m desperately in love with my husband, he’s just not here,’ and I’m fine with that.

“It’s OK for me to be a woman on her own … I don’t want to be getting over him, I don’t want to be grieving him, I want to hold him here. I will never settle – I had the best.’’

Going forward, despite all of the heartbreak of the past few years, Bailey says it is hope – and Pickwell’s love – that keep driving her forward.

“The world is full of hope, it’s just sometimes it’s harder to see, but I want to be the one that believes that good things will happen,” she says.

Given the experiences she has been through, that’s a pretty extraordinary place to be.

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