(From left) Smokey Robinson, Berry Gordy, Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder attend 'Motown: The Musical' opening night at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on April 14, 2013, in New York City. Photo: TNS
Smokey Robinson is singing like a bird about an old-school romance with Diana Ross.
The Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, known for Motown hits such as Tracks Of My Tears and The Temptations classic My Girl, has revealed he had an extramarital affair with the The Supremes frontwoman in the early 1960s.
“I was married at the time,” he told The Guardian in an article published Thursday (April 27). “We were working together and it just happened. But it was beautiful. She’s a beautiful lady, and I love her right till today.”
“She’s one of my closest people,” Robinson continued about his fellow Detroit native. “She was young and trying to get her career together. I was trying to help her. I brought her to Motown, in fact. I wasn’t going after her and she wasn’t going after me. It just happened.”
The 83-year-old Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, who’s making the rounds promoting his new album Gasms, married his first wife, fellow Miracles group member Claudette Rogers, in 1959. The couple had two children together and were married for 27 years, though Robinson admits to having several affairs along the way.
He said the Ross affair ended after about a year. “After we’d been seeing each other for a while, Diana said to me she couldn’t do that because she knew Claudette, and she knew I still loved my wife. And I did. I loved my wife very much,” he shared.
Robinson later admitted to fathering a baby with another woman in 1984, which led to his and Roger’s divorce in 1986.
“I learned that we are capable of loving more than one person at the same time,” the 2016 Gershwin Prize honoree explained. “It’s not because one person isn’t worthy or they don’t live up to what you expect – it has to do with feelings. If we could control love, nobody would love anybody. Nobody would take that chance.”
Following her affair with Robinson, Ross went on to have a yearslong relationship with Motown Records founder and Robinson’s best friend Berry Gordy.
That relationship resulted in Ross getting pregnant with her first child, Rhonda, however she married music executive Robert Ellis Silberstein just two months into that pregnancy. Silberstein raised Rhonda as his own daughter, despite knowing her true paternity.
That marriage lasted through 1977, during which time the couple had two daughters together, Tracee Ellis and Chudney Ross.
The Love Hangover songstress later married Norwegian businessman Arne Naess Jr in 1985. Their union produced two sons, entrepreneur Ross Arne Naess and actor Evan Ross. The couple divorced after reports revealed that Naess had fathered a child with another woman in Norway.
In 2002, Smokey Robinson married his current wife, interior designer Frances Gladney. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
