Bethel Church senior leader Bill Johnson has married his fiancée Linda Francoeur following a private ceremony.

Johnson and Francoeur were married on 18 August, a month after the 75-year-old pastor proposed at his birthday celebration, according to Protestia.

Kris Vallotton, a senior leader at Bethel Church, reportedly officiated at the ceremony.

Johnson had revealed details of the engagement while speaking at Kenneth Copeland's Southwest Believers' Convention, despite currently being on a four-month sabbatical from Bethel.

“I am engaged to be married,” Johnson told the convention crowd before asking Francoeur to stand. “We are getting married very soon.”

He said he decided to propose in front of his family on his 75th birthday on 18 July after seeing the relationship Francoeur had developed with them.

“Linda loves my family so much - my family is so crazy about her that I thought, ‘I’m going to do the unusual. I’m going to propose at my birthday party,’” he said.

“… And I went down on a knee. I’m not going to right now, but I went down on a knee. If I do it now with tears and all, I’ll be a mess. So, but uh anyway, I asked her to marry me and my kids just cheered and just went, ‘This is great.’ Yeah. So, so fun.”

Johnson had also shared news of the engagement with the Bethel congregation, telling church members that the relationship represented a new chapter in his life without replacing what had come before.

His first wife, Beni Johnson, died from cancer in July 2022 at the age of 67. The couple had been married for more than four decades and had three children.

“She’s not going to be filling Beni’s shoes. That’s impossible,” Johnson said of Francoeur. “Beni took her shoes with her, and Linda has her own shoes to fill.”

Johnson described Francoeur as a woman of “deep, deep compassion” with “great wisdom and discernment”, adding that she had already become “a great strength” to him.