Angélil started out in 1961 as a pop singer in Montreal. He formed a pop rock group, Les Baronets (fr), with childhood friends Pierre Labelle and Jean Beaulne. Les Baronets had some hits during the 1960s, mostly translations of English-language pop hits from the United Kingdom or the United States, such as “C’est fou, mais c’est tout” in 1964 (a translation of The Beatles’ song “Hold Me Tight”). After the dissolution of the group in 1972, Angélil and best friend Guy Cloutier began managing artists.

In 1966, Angélil married his first wife, Denyse Duquette. They had a son, Patrick (born 1968), and divorced in 1972. In 1974, he married singer Anne Renée‍—‌the couple had two children, Jean-Pierre (born 1974) and Anne-Marie Angélil (born 1977), they divorced in 1986. Anne-Marie married singer Marc Dupré in 2000.

Together they managed the career of two successful Québec entertainers René Simard and Ginette Reno, among many other pop stars at the time. They parted ways in 1981 to each become solo managers. In 1981 (not long after being terminated as Ginette’s manager and considering leaving the music business to pursue law school) René heard Céline Dion’s demo tape when he was considered as a potential producer for her album. He soon took over as her agent. He continued as her manager until June 2014, when he stepped down because he had cancer.

Angélil, a well-known former singer-turned-manager, was sent a tape of then 12-year-old singer, Céline Dion, and invited her to audition in Quebec. He began managing her career, taking the teen and her mother on tour in Canada, Japan and Europe. He mortgaged his house to finance her first album in 1981.

Angélil and Dion began a personal relationship in 1988. Their relationship began the night Céline won the Eurovision Song Contest on April 30, 1988. They married on December 17, 1994, in a lavish wedding ceremony at Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica, which was broadcast live on Canadian television.

Angélil suffered a heart attack in 1991 at age 49. In 1999 he was diagnosed with throat cancer and made a full recovery after treatment. He appeared in the video for Simple Plan’s song “Save You” as a survivor of cancer. In 2009, Angélil reportedly underwent a heart-related medical procedure to deal with arterial blockage. The procedure had been planned for months and was not heart surgery.

After Angélil was diagnosed with cancer in 1999, and before beginning radiation treatment, the couple turned to in-vitro fertilization. Their efforts were extensively publicized. Their son René-Charles Angélil was born on January 25, 2001. Dion suffered a miscarriage in 2009, then gave birth to twin boys on October 23, 2010. The boys were named Eddy after Eddy Marnay, who produced Dion’s first five albums, and Nelson Angélil after former South African president Nelson Mandela.

In 2001 Angélil and Dion filed a $5 million defamation lawsuit against the Quebec tabloid Allô Vedettes, which claimed that the couple paid $5,001 to rent the swimming pool of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas so that Dion could sunbathe topless and Angélil could go skinny dipping. The couple strenuously denied the claim.

Angélil was an avid poker player, having qualified for the 2005 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions, and finishing in the money at the 2007 Mirage Poker Showdown event on the World Poker Tour, a series of high-stakes tournaments. Angélil was also rumoured to be a dedicated gambler away from the poker table. He reportedly gambled upwards of $1 million a week at Caesars Palace, and kept a line of credit for the same amount at Bellagio. In 2007 Jan Jones, a casino executive and the former mayor of Las Vegas, claimed that Angélil gambled $1 million a week, but later retracted the statement. Caesars Palace later released a statement of Angélil’s gambling losses and wins with his permission.

Angélil became one of several co-owners of Montreal’s iconic Schwartz’s Deli in 2012.

Angélil had surgery in December 2013 for throat cancer. In June 2014 Angélil stepped down as Dion’s manager to focus on his health, but was still involved in business decisions related to her career. In September 2015 Dion announced that Angélil’s cancer had progressed and that he had only “months to live”. Angélil died on January 14, 2016 of throat cancer, two days before his 74th birthday. He received a “national funeral” service at Notre-Dame Basilica from the government of Quebec on January 22 and was buried at the Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery.