The Legendary A-List Couple Who Inspired Paul McCartney's ‘Perfect' Secret Gift to Linda

Paul McCartney just revealed a thoughtful, one-of-a-kind gift idea for significant others.

The musician recently spoke to Amanda Dimoldenberg for an episode of Chicken Shop Dateabout his late wife, LindaMcCartney.

McCartney gave his wife a very special piece of jewelry. In the interview, he admitted another A-list couple inspired the idea.

"I'd seen Aristotle Onassis gave his wives a bracelet," he said. "And so, one of them was Jackie Onassis, and so it [spelled out] J-I-L-Y: 'Jackie, I love you.'"

"And so I suddenly thought, 'Perfect!' Get Linda one and it'll be L-I-L-Y, 'Linda, I love you,'" McCartney said. "Lily. It's the perfect name to do that with."

The couple married in 1969, just a year before McCartney left the Beatles. They had three children together, and the "Hey Jude" singer adopted his wife's daughter from a previous marriage. Linda died in 1998 from breast cancer.

McCartney looked back at her impact in Words + Music with Audible. He called his late wife a "freeing influence" on him.

"She had grown up in a posh bit of New York. She was on track to become the sort of company wife. But she didn't like that. She liked rock ‘n' roll," McCartney shared. "And she would do things like sneak out of the house late at night and drive into New York with a boyfriend. So there was a lot of freedom in her thinking. So I think that really was good for me."

The "Yesterday" singer added that she helped him decompress and "not to be too uptight."

"You'd be saying, ‘Oh, I'd love to do so and so but I can't.' And she'd say, ‘It's allowed.' It's like all the weight just went off," he said. "‘It's allowed.' Yeah, of course it is!"

McCartney's latest album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, is out now.

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This story was originally published May 29, 2026 at 6:19 PM.