In less than 24 hours, Dr Kei­th Row­ley will re­tire as Prime Min­is­ter, fi­nal­ly join­ing his wife, Sharon Row­ley, on that jour­ney, some­thing he said she's been ask­ing of him for sev­er­al years.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Mrs Row­ley - known to be grace­ful and qui­et – the po­lar op­po­site to her of­ten bold and un­apolo­getic hus­band, shared how life has been in the White­hall, Port-of-Spain and what’s she most look­ing for­ward to in their fu­ture.

While the Prime Min­is­ter opt­ed to spend his fi­nal day in of­fice on the golf course in To­ba­go yes­ter­day, Mrs Row­ley, who was pack­ing up their be­long­ings to move out of the PM's Res­i­dence, used her fi­nal mo­ments to thank the na­tion while prais­ing her hus­band for leav­ing a lega­cy as one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bet­ter lead­ers.

She said, “I would like to say, as wife of the PM of T&T, thank you to the peo­ple of T&T for al­low­ing us to serve you. It has been a true ho­n­our and a priv­i­lege.”

Asked how it felt to be the wife of the PM, she said it was an ho­n­our and a priv­i­lege but a role she ad­mits has been sac­ri­fi­cial.

Speak­ing of the sac­ri­fices she’s had to make to help Dr Row­ley in his prime min­is­te­r­i­al role, Mrs Row­ley joked that she’s felt like a sin­gle par­ent.

“The job of a prime min­is­ter is a busy, time-con­sum­ing and chal­leng­ing one. It is a 24-hour job, the de­vo­tion to which takes you away from your fam­i­ly. My chil­dren and I have had to deal with this," she said.

"We got mar­ried in 1985, our first daugh­ter was born in 1986 and our sec­ond in 1988. I jok­ing­ly say that I know what it is like to be a sin­gle par­ent. One im­por­tant thing is that his love for fam­i­ly has nev­er wa­vered. For him, it was im­per­a­tive that we did va­ca­tions to­geth­er.”

Mrs Row­ley has al­ways been poised, even when her hus­band is fac­ing the tough­est of crit­ics.

Asked how it felt to wit­ness Dr Row­ley suf­fer con­stant pub­lic crit­i­cism from those he served and peo­ple across the po­lit­i­cal di­vide, she ad­mit­ted, “We have been mar­ried for al­most 40 years, and it is very dif­fi­cult to see some­one you love be­ing un­der con­stant at­tack. While my Teflon im­age was ev­i­dent, at times be­neath the sur­face was pure pain. I would rarely be on Face­book and when I did go, I would try to gloss over the neg­a­tives. As my chil­dren were grow­ing up, Kei­th would al­ways try to pro­tect them.”

That’s why af­ter spend­ing 45 of his 75 years in pub­lic life, Mrs Row­ley says it's now time for him to move on and de­vote his time to him­self and their fam­i­ly.

In ret­ro­spect, she said she un­der­stood why he stayed on so long. She said in 2020, Dr Row­ley still had a lot of un­fin­ished work and need­ed to nur­ture his young Cab­i­net, call­ing it a “good de­ci­sion for the coun­try.”

Her hus­band’s lega­cy

When it comes to Dr Row­ley’s lega­cy, a proud Mrs Row­ley said he has been one of T&T’s bet­ter lead­ers.

She said, “He has been a Prime Min­is­ter who served the na­tion with dig­ni­ty, pas­sion and in­tegri­ty. I tru­ly be­lieve that he has been one of T&T's bet­ter lead­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly as he suc­cess­ful­ly steered the coun­try through the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, one of the most dif­fi­cult pe­ri­ods in our his­to­ry.”

But the pop­u­la­tion has seen Dr Row­ley make some un­pop­u­lar de­ci­sions too, lead­ing some to as­sume he lacks em­pa­thy.

As his wife, Mrs Row­ley said this is not the case. She called him a “a true pa­tri­ot” who loves T&T and has al­ways put coun­try first. She said for him, "To­geth­er We As­pire, To­geth­er We Achieve" is per­haps the best mot­to which could have been be­stowed on us and is in­dica­tive of what he ex­pects of our cit­i­zens.

While his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents may dis­agree, Mrs Row­ley said there’s a lot more to Dr Row­ley than meets the eye.

She said, “De­spite his of­te stern ex­te­ri­or, he is a kind and em­pa­thet­ic per­son who of­ten ap­pre­ci­at­ed and gives a good joke. Some­times I would tell him to stop laugh­ing at his own jokes.”

Mrs Row­ley said T&T’s sev­enth prime min­is­ter is demit­ting of­fice sat­is­fied he's done the best he could do for the peo­ple of T&T, adding he is al­so de­ter­mined to over­see a smooth tran­si­tion.

As for in­com­ing prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young, Mrs Row­ley’s ad­vice is for him to “be your au­then­tic self.”

As this chap­ter of their lives comes to an end, Mrs Row­ley said she's most look­ing for­ward to spend­ing time with her hus­band again.

Daugh­ter: Glad to have 'reg­u­lar dad' back

Mrs Row­ley isn’t the on­ly one look­ing for­ward to spend­ing more time with Dr Row­ley.

Their el­dest daugh­ter Tonya yes­ter­day said she’s glad to have her "reg­u­lar dad" back.

Speak­ing via tele­phone, Tonya said, “Ob­vi­ous­ly, be­cause he’s in the pub­lic life, it takes you away and the time you could spend with fam­i­ly would not have been the same like every oth­er per­son whose par­ent was not in pub­lic life. Meet­ings, ap­point­ments, trav­el, things that would take you away from the home which now, we’re go­ing to be very glad to have him back full time ..." she said

"Forty-some­thing years is a long time. That’s even old­er than me. Some part of your life, you want to be able to en­joy full and have for your­self and for your fam­i­ly. He’s giv­en a lot to the coun­try, which we un­der­stand, but we think he needs to en­joy re­tire­ment and en­joy life out­side of the pub­lic life.”

De­spite his hec­tic sched­ule, Tonya said her dad al­ways made time for his chil­dren and now that he’s a grand­fa­ther to three, that hasn’t changed.

Dr Row­ley has three grand­chil­dren, 10-year-old Lu­cas, four-year-old Liam and two-year-old Arya.

She added, “He’s my dad. Al­ways first and fore­most my dad, like any oth­er reg­u­lar dad. The same way every­one else’s fa­ther would have taught them to ride a bike. That’s what he did. When we were younger, we’re rid­ing out­side while he’s gar­den­ing or when we’re play­ing et cetera.

"He’s now moved from that role in­to the role of a dot­ting grand­dad. They can do no wrong in his eyes. He’s close with both of my sons. It’s just a dif­fer­ent dy­nam­ic. He would go and gar­den with my son and car­ry him to plant peas. He’s very much the dot­ting, lov­ing grand­fa­ther.”

She said she un­der­stood her fa­ther's vi­sion for the coun­try, so she nev­er felt like she had to com­pete for his at­ten­tion.

But when it comes to the harsh crit­i­cism her dad has had to face over the years, Tonya too said it has been hurt­ful.

She said, “It’s al­ways been hurt­ful to see neg­a­tive com­ments for any­body to see about any­one they love, and be­ing in this po­si­tion of be­ing in the pub­lic eye ex­pos­es you to a lot more crit­i­cism. Even­tu­al­ly, you get to un­der­stand that every­one is not go­ing to like you or not go­ing to like the de­ci­sions that you have to make and you kind of learn to live with it. And some­times, you just have to take cer­tain steps for your own men­tal health. You don’t have to read every­thing. You don’t have to read the com­ments.”

Asked the great­est lessons she’s learnt from her fa­ther, Tonya said, “A lev­el of re­silience. I don’t know how many peo­ple that pos­sess it. An abil­i­ty to be very stead­fast, fo­cused on your vi­sion and un­der­stand­ing that some­times, heavy is the head that wears the crown, and you may have to make un­pop­u­lar de­ci­sions. Hav­ing in­tegri­ty, that is some­thing that’s been in­stilled in my sis­ter and I.”

A proud daugh­ter al­so thanked the na­tion for go­ing the course with her dad as PM.