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By Christy Anyanwu
Joan Okorodudu is a renowned Nigerian fashion entrepreneur, model scout, and former beauty queen. She’s the founder of Isis Models Africa, a leading modeling agency, and creator of platforms like Nigeria’s Next Super Model and Africa’s Next Super Model.
She recently lost her heartthrob, Air Vice Marshal Terry Okorodudu (rtd) who passed away on September 9, 2025, at the age of 70. He was a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Delta State and died in Nairobi, Kenya, after a protracted illness.
In this interview with Saturday Sun, his wife lost control of her emotions intermittently as she talked about her husband, his life and what she’s missing already by losing him.
What type of man was your husband?
My husband, I really don’t want to call him late because, he was an amazing man. A detribalised Nigerian, decent to the core, incorruptible. He was my best friend. This is a man that believed in God so much. He was also gifted. He was everything to me. Oh God, apart from God, he was everything.
My husband was everything to me. He was my best friend. Some people might say, how lucky can you be? Yeah, my husband was not a hundred per cent. He had this tough side, you know, by pushing you to excel, pushing you. He was just a man who liked everything to be in tip top. I was the scattered one and my husband was the prim and proper one.
We’ve never slept in different rooms. He just wanted me by his side all the time. And that was what happened until the day he died. You know, he wanted me by his side. I was holding him by the right arm and my son was holding him by the left arm. (Crying) I held him and I placed a kiss on his head and I begged him, please, don’t to give up. My husband never allowed anybody to judge me. If you go and call my husband, trying to report me, you’re wasting your time. And he will even tell you to stop talking about his wife like that. Somebody called me recently, a friend of his and He said, I just want to let you know that you were his world. Another person called me and said, your husband loved you so much.(Crying)
This is a man who was friends to everyone as soon as he came into the Elumelu’s family, he was just friends to my brothers, my cousins. The day of my marriage in Onichaoluna, my dowry was paid to Ras Kimono’s father because he was the oldest man in my family. Ras Kimono’s father held his hands and joined the two of us. My husband respected people. He didn’t have acrimonies. He was a decent man to the core. He never does anything without calling Mama J. He always asks Mama J, what she thinks, and throughout in the ICU, until he died, He showed me so much love. He showed the grandchildren. The three years he spent with the grandchildren were the best years ever. My son, I can see the character of his father in him.
My husband was a man who, you don’t even bring anything to him and say, take, because he did something for you.
What would you miss about him?
This is a man when he wakes up, prays for me, touches my head and he prays for me. This is a man who will say, Mama J, what do you want me to bring? This is a man when we, I mean, they will call me and say, let’s go, let’s go and eat. Even if he’s, he’s flying, when he was flying the presidential airplane, if he’s taking the plane for service in Switzerland, for example, he will say, Mama J, would you want to come meet me? And then I will go, I’ll stay with him and then go back.
My son was like our handbag. He’s a man that showed me what a family should be. When I first met him, I thought that this is too good to be true.
Ah, God. He was my best friend. Decent. He was a perfect officer, a gentleman and a pilot. Sometimes when I fly in the plane that he’s flying, you know, when I come down, like I have so much joy, you know, you know, I just look at him. Ah, for me, he was the sexiest man alive when he came out in his jumpsuit, trying to take a flight when he was flying the G222, even when he went for the training in, Italy, Napoli, I was there. I went and stayed with him. Even when the Pope came, I was the first person that Pope John Paul blessed when he landed in Nigeria back in the days.
He didn’t stop me from doing anything. He actually pushed me to become what I am today and he was just a guy who, you know, he wanted to make sure you do things the right way. Also noteworthy: without my husband, Isis Models wouldn’t have become the most successful modelling agency out of the continent of Africa.
Everybody who has worked under him today will tell you that he pushed them to become what they are. Ah, the calls I’m getting, without your husband, this, that, you know, just a decent man, a decent man. I remember the first time he gave me the code to his, ah, you know, his phone.
The phone was ringing. He said, put so so number, the phone will open and when he came out of the bathroom, he said, do not make it a habit and I laughed. Don’t go snooping around my phone and I laughed. He was just the best. I think after a while it became like, even though he was my husband, he was my brother, he was everything to me and he never does things without consulting me or my son. The last holiday I took with him to Dubai, was like he knew it was going to be the last.
How did you meet him?
If I tell people the way we met, it’s unbelievable. People are going to be shocked at the way we met and the time we married four months later, we were husband and wife. We met during my NYSC in Kaduna. And the reason I chose Kaduna for my NYSC, because when I came back from America, the NYSC will always ask you, the people who studied, they call them foreign graduates, to choose where you want to go.
I chose Kaduna because that was where I won the National Sports Festival in the 100 metres hurdles in Kaduna 77 and I liked the place so I just wanted to go back there. I did my NYSC with the NTA Kaduna and New Nigerian newspaper. I started with the Sunday New Nigerian newspaper and then went to NTA and completed my NYSC. It was a fun memory. Before I came back from America, at our graduation in America, Mrs Oprah Benson came for her daughter’s graduation and we were graduating the same day, Mrs Bimbola Cardoso. She was Bimbola Benson then and we also had Eki Igbinedion, who was Eki on NYSC at that time. She said, Oh, you’re so pretty. I think when you come back, do Miss Nigeria. And I took to her advice and I did Miss Nigeria and I won Miss Nigeria (Kaduna,) I won a refrigerator, won so many things. It was sponsored by a company called Bahama Guarana then. And then I went ahead and won Miss Nigeria at the Federal Palace Hotel for the finals. There were two cars then and I won one of them. I think I won the car that was donated by Florence Ita Giwa at that time. There were two cars, a Peugeot 504 and a Volkswagen Beetle and I got the Volkswagen Beetle, and so many other things. At the finale, my husband was there. He was still my boyfriend then. He was at the finale. Even at the Miss Nigeria Kaduna, he was there. He has always been there. I don’t know how I’m going to cope. But they say time heals.
What will you miss about him?
The way he looks at the grandchildren as one of his greatest accomplishments, the way he looks at his son, the way he looks at me, my daughter-in-law, the way we bonded, the way even the baby up to today is asking, where is grandpa? You know, the others know now. They know that grandpa is in heaven, you know. People from all over the world have called me and said, oh my God, what a decent guy you had as a husband. I will miss him even bringing up vitamins and making sure that I take vitamins. I will miss him telling me that you’re the most beautiful woman on earth. I still play some of the videos and the voice notes that he left me.
I’m grieving. If someone had told me I was going to be a widow, even though, I’ll be 67 years old this next month, October, but you can’t stop grieving. Because he was my soul mate, it will be difficult. You know, there are some women that probably will not grieve too much, you know, but for me, I grieve because every little thing, he did for me. I’m going to grieve because I no longer have a partner that I do that long walk with.
I’m going to grieve because I no longer have a partner that will come into the room and drop something for me and say, Mama J, that’s yours. I no longer have a partner that will surprise me on my birthday. I no longer have a partner that, oh, the grieving is real…
My son is so strong, but I’m so scared that he’s going to break down. But we’re holding on. But it’s just me that just keeps bursting into tears. I love that man so much. Oh, my God, I loved him so much. I loved him so much. It’s like a part of me. My heart has been torn.
