Smokey Robinson Reveals He Had an Affair With 'Beautiful' Diana Ross While Still Married to First Wife: 'It Just Happened'
Smokey Robinson just made a shocking confession about Diana Ross.
The music icon revealed that while he was still married to his first wife, Claudette Rogers, he and the Supreme engaged in a year-long affair.
“I was married at the time. [Ross and I] were working together and it just happened. But it was beautiful,” Robinson explained in an interview published on Thursday, April 29. “She’s a beautiful lady, and I love her right til today. She’s one of my closest people. She was young and trying to get her career together."
The "Baby Come Close" artist was "trying to help” Ross break into the music industry at the time, but "The Boss" singer was not so interested in her mentor at first. “I wasn’t going after her and she wasn’t going after me," the 83-year-old explained.
“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,” he claimed of Rodgers — who he was married to from 1959 to 1986. “And I did. I loved my wife very much.”
Despite the two music legends calling off their secret romance, Robinson said their fling taught him a lot about giving the heart what it wants. “I learned that we are capable of loving more than one person at the same time. And it has been made taboo by us. By people,” he noted.
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“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," Robinson — who remarried second wife Frances Glandney. in 2002 — continued. "Why would you put your heart out there for somebody to be able to hurt you like that and make you able to have those feelings?”
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The Guardian conducted the interview with Robinson.