Angela “Big Ang” Raiola’s husband, Neil Murphy, claims he never left the late Mob Wives star’s side, despite her claims during her final interview that he was absent during her battle against cancer.
The reality personality died on February 18.
“I was there at the end,” Murphy told Entertainment Tonight in a new interview. “I never left her side. I went to every procedure — even though she didn’t want me, I went. I was there at the hospital for the last two days with her. I mean, to me, we weren’t ‘estranged.’”
Prior to her death, Big Ang, who died at age 55 from stage IV lung and brain cancer, told Dr. Oz that Murphy “abandoned her” and that they had split because she “felt like he never stepped up to the plate.”
Murphy, however, claims that he didn’t want to argue with the ill VH1 star.
“She didn’t want me there [at times]. I didn’t want to argue with a sick person,” he told ET. “I was on the phone with her every day. I talked to her before chemo, after chemo. When she had a couple of procedures done, she was in the hospital for a day, I was there. So I wouldn’t call it estranged. It was just, you know, she was going through a rough time and she, I guess, took it out on me. And I wasn’t going to fight with her. I didn’t walk away [or] … left her. I was there.”
Murphy attended Big Ang’s funeral, along with family and friends, in Brooklyn on February 22.
“We had a lot of good times together,” he recalled to ET of his late wife. “It was a crazy life at the end, you know. We were regular people, then she became a celebrity. It was kind of a crazy life being married to her, but it was good. I would never change anything.”
