Melissa Lyon breaks silence on ‘The Footy Show’ sex scandal
MELISSA Lyon’s marriage was ripped apart when she discovered husband Garry Lyon was having a relationship with Nicky Brownless. Two years on, she breaks her silence on ‘The Footy Show’ sex scandal.
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MELISSA Lyon’s marriage was ripped apart when she discovered her husband Garry Lyon was having a close secret relationship with his best friend’s wife Nicky Brownless.
But now the mother-of-three is ready to run her own race, the New York marathon and the rest of her life.
Pounding the pavement was what kept Melissa from falling to pieces as she carried the silent burden of knowing her 30-year love with Demons great Garry had collapsed.
NICKY BROWNLESS SAYS SHE IS ‘VERY HAPPY’ WITH GARRY LYON
Melissa says the marriage was doomed five years ago when she first confronted her husband and Billy’s then-wife Nicky about their secret relationship, not 18 months ago when the headlines broke.
“The truth is that five years ago she destroyed my marriage,” Melissa, 49 said from New York as she geared up for a quick training session before the gruelling 42.2km marathon in two days.
Truth! It’s a word that caught in Melissa’s throat last week as she was hitting her stride back in Melbourne.
Her phone had gone into meltdown with messages from friends like James Brayshaw’s ex-wife Sarah and family members reading a Herald Sun interview with Nicky, who said the former friends were all happy.
“We know the truth, that’s the most powerful thing,” Nicky proclaimed.
Melissa said she had never sprinted so fast, even laughing that she almost clocked a personal best, as she tried to absorb what Nicky was so publicly saying.
“I couldn’t believe it. It just felt so disrespectful,” Melissa said.
“I felt bad for Billy too. He has been really dignified through all this.
“She has never reached out to me to apologise which shows a person’s true colours.”
Carrying a dignified silence does not feel so dignified when you are witnessing history being rewritten out in the headlines to form a nicely spun warm and fuzzy narrative.
“It has been hard,” Melissa said.
“There is another person in all of this that no one seems to care about.
“We coexisted for a couple of years after I first found out. Things were amicable because I thought it had all stopped.
“I thought they knew it would all be too messy and they were smart. But yeah, they chose not to stop.
“I’m not going to lie, it still upsets me every day the thought of them together.”
The Lyon and Brownless families, who often travelled overseas together and had their last trip to the London Olympics five years ago, will be forever fractured.
Melissa is the forgotten victim in the circus that’s ensued after the drama so publicly unfolded last year when Garry took leave from his television role on The Footy Show and Footy Classified, revealing he had been battling depression for several months.
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“It was just all so clouded,” Melissa said.
“I am the first to want Garry to get help and support; remember I was there with him for 30 years.
“But that doesn’t mean you can’t not address what happened, because it’s not something I’m ever going to be able to forget.”
Melissa has never been one to seek the limelight.
She doesn’t live that way, preferring to focus on her three boys, Ben 23, Tom 21, and Josh 19, at their family home in Hawthorn.
Josh was just starting year 12 when news of the relationship erupted.
“My friends have all said ‘Why don’t you tell people the truth?’ But I’ve always just thought about my boys,” Melissa said.
“In a way they have been forgotten too. It’s weird for them. The last time we were all sitting at a table was having Christmas together with Billy there too. It’s tough.
“They are not happy about the way things are with their mum and dad. We’ve had special occasions, 21sts, things like that are all destroyed now.”
How the news unfolded was especially hard, not to mention disappointing.
Melissa warned manager Craig Kelly, who looks after both Billy and Garry, about the flow-on effects that would play out after she got that call from Billy last January telling her the relationship had surfaced.
“It just felt so orchestrated,” she said.
“And I think it was handled appallingly.”
Now Melissa is on her own boys’ trip.
Sons Ben and Josh have flown to the US with their mum to be by her side as she takes on her own physical and emotional Everest — in the New York marathon.
All her boys had supported her through everything and their relationship was rock solid, Melissa said.
“As far as I’m concerned it is all about the boys and I’m in a pretty good place.
“We have an amazing relationship. The boys live with me and I’ve been so proud of them and the way they have handled it. They love their dad and want a relationship with their dad. But they have been very protective of me.”
Melissa isn’t interested in settling scores or addressing all the dirty laundry that followed on from that confrontation five years ago.
But there comes a time when the narrative needs to be corrected, so she can move on with her own life.
“Sometimes it’s just easier telling the truth,” she said.
Last year was looking after her sons, but this year has been focusing on her.
For the past 12 months she has trained gruelling hours preparing for the marathon.
She said the discipline, training and support from her new gym buddies has also been instrumental to her coping.
“Normally for me if something like this had happened I would have sat home and drunk wine and eaten too much,” she said.
“Mentally I’m so much stronger now. I go for a run and clear my head.”
Working out at Hawthorn’s Vision PT gym was a place of solace in those dark times, she said.
“No one ever asked me questions. It was the only place when it all happened last year that I felt like I could go to and no one was going to judge me.”
Garry and Melissa are still not divorced but finalised their financial settlement two weeks ago, something that did not go unnoticed in the timing of Nicky’s public interview.
“Now the settlement is finally out of the way I definitely feel like I can move on,” she said.
It is the small things, like owning her own credit card, which had helped pick up her pace in taking back the power and control of her own life.
“It feels quite liberating. I’m in control of my finances and my life. Everything and he can’t know what I’m doing,” she said.
“I’m independent.”
And with all the public attention of her ex-husband’s relationships, what about a new man in her own life?
“Who knows?” She laughed.
“Up until now I’ve been in a bubble, just focused on the boys and then training for the race.
“But my friends all say you can meet a nice man in the Big Apple.
“Maybe I will.”
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