The Truth About Sonny And Cher's Relationship

Cher holds the honor of being the sole singer to ever score at least one No. 1 "single on a Billboard chart in six consecutive decades," per The Ringer, between the '60s and the 2010s — but if it'd been up to her back in the Swinging Sixties, her first smash hit may never have been recorded. While appearing on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" in April 2021, the singer-actor revealed that she was less than enthused when her then-husband, the late Sonny Bono, woke her up in the middle of the night, excited about the duet he'd just written: "I Got You Babe." Cher recalled telling Bono, "This is a stupid song. I'm going back to bed."

Released in 1965, the tune soared to the top of the charts and propelled the duo of Sonny and Cher to the heights of pop stardom. Over the following decades, they very publicly navigated the ups and downs of fame, as well as marriage, parenthood, divorce, and new beginnings in Hollywood and beyond. Though their professional — and romantic — relationship didn't last far past the mid-1970s, Sonny and Cher have remained one of showbiz's most iconic pairings. 

Here's what you need to know about their relationship.

It may be hard to believe that the woman who wore a mesh thong bodysuit on an aircraft carrier in the "If I Could Turn Back Time" video was ever anything but a thousand percent confident on stage, but when Cher was just starting out, she didn't like performing alone. Her record-promoter beau, Sonny Bono, urged Cher to go solo, but she felt too nervous singing by herself — and so, the Sonny and Cher duo was born. Well, sort of. Per Billboard, they were originally known as Caesar & Cleo, before eventually landing on their household moniker.

"I was this massive amount of energy with no direction," Cher told the outlet in 2017. "I knew what I wanted to do, but I never would've gotten there without Sonny." Though their original stage name proved to be a bust, they made it big with the Bono-written No. 1 anthem, "I Got You Babe," in 1965. As Cher shared with Elle: "It sounds so dumb, but everything happened so fast. I didn't even know where I was. One day we were poor ... three days later, we were famous."

With other hits like "The Beat Goes On" and a Grammy nomination for best new artist, Sonny and Cher were suddenly one of the biggest pop acts, but just like their flash success, they came to be seen as uncool by the end of the '60s. "We broke big barriers, but we didn't do drugs," Cher explained to Elle. "And we didn't change our sound."

"Sonny and I have been together since I was 16," Cher told People in 1974, following her separation from Sonny Bono. "So we've been more than husband and wife. It's like husband, mother, brother, sister, daughter, father. To break up something like that is a hard thing."

Sonny and Cher's TV show was a hit in the early 1970s, but behind the scenes, their marriage was deteriorating. Both openly saw other people, but by 1974, Cher let it be known that she was tired of what she felt were Bono's controlling ways. She cited "involuntary servitude" when she filed for divorce that year, per Elle, and claimed their work arrangements constituted "a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment," as the outlet put it. In 2018, Cher alleged to Elle that Bono had told her at the end, "America will hate you and you won't have a job."

In his 1991 memoir, "And the Beat Goes On," Bono blamed the split in part on Cher supposedly not wanting to share the limelight, writing (via The Washington Post), "She really wanted to be bigger than [Bob] Dylan and [Mick] Jagger." When she left, Cher learned that Bono owned a 95% stake in their business, with another 5% belonging to their lawyer. With outstanding contracts broken, she even ended up "ow[ing] Sonny millions," according to Elle.

It was all forward movement, though, for the pop icon. Three days after finalizing her divorce from Bono in 1975, Cher married rocker Gregg Allman, with whom she had son Elijah Blue Allman.

Despite their individual successes, things between Sonny Bono and Cher were sometimes strained following their 1975 divorce. In his 1991 memoir, "And the Beat Goes On," Bono claimed that his ex-wife had been checked out of their marriage and was more interested in fame, like practicing signing autographs in the mirror at home. "She wasn't a victim. It wasn't me [who was] fixed on the notion that we had to be stars," he wrote (via People).

Cher's reaction to Bono's book? "I think he should stick to writing songs. He does that better," she said in a statement at the time (via The Washington Post). The singer-actor added: "Of all the people who have known me well, Sonny knew me the least."

Over the years, Cher has talked about the enduring connection she shared with Bono, but also how she felt that he was too controlling. "He had made every decision for me," she claimed to Billboard in 2017. "I knew how to sing and how to be a mother. I didn't know anything else." However, Cher added, "I could forgive him almost anything. I mean, he tried to take our [child] away from me during the divorce, and it didn't work. The day our divorce was final, he grabbed me in front of the courthouse, bent me back, and stuck his tongue in my mouth. We were both laughing hysterically."

What was supposed to be a fun family getaway turned tragic on January 5, 1998. While skiing in California's South Lake Tahoe with his wife, Mary, and two young children, Sonny Bono crashed into a tree, per History. He wasn't wearing a helmet when the accident occurred. "We skied to the bottom, and he wasn't anywhere," Mary Bono recalled to the Desert Sun in 2017. "I was wondering if he fell, or if he went to the right and I went to the left — if he went down to a different chair." It took rescuers three days to locate Sonny's missing body.

The tragic news of the congressman and former entertainer's death sent shockwaves around the political and showbiz worlds. After the accident, Mary said Cher was "a constant source of comfort" and invited her to play a big part in the funeral. "I thought it was really important that all of the bad words, all the bad years, become meaningless," Mary told the Desert Sun. She went on to get elected and serve in her late husband's congressional seat until 2013.

At the nationally-televised funeral, Cher delivered an emotional eulogy for her late ex-husband and singing partner. "When I was young, there was this section in the Reader's Digest, and it was called 'The Most Unforgettable Character I've Ever Met,'" she said through tears. "And for me that person is Sonny Bono."

With Sonny Bono and Cher as parents, Chaz Bono wasn't just famous from a young age — he was also a featured player, frequently appearing on his parents' variety show, "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour." But as Chaz recounted in his 2011 memoir, "Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man," he doesn't see his early fame through the rosiest of rose-colored glasses. "For years, random people have approached me with their memories of me as a young child, hoping that I will share in their enthusiasm and offer a precious pearl of nostalgia from the family vault," he wrote (via The Buffalo News). "What they have never quite understood is that these memories are theirs, not mine."

When Chaz came out as gay, he shared that his father was accepting, but his mother was upset because she heard it from Sonny first and not Chaz. Cher and Chaz were not on good terms after that, but later reconciled. Sadly, at the time of Sonny Bono's death, Chaz and his father were "estranged," largely stemming from issues Chaz had with Sonny's Republican political stances, per the Desert Sun.

In 2020, Cher talked to CNN about how she evolved and came to accept Chaz after he came out and transitioned: "It was very unlike me to — in the beginning — have a problem with Chaz being gay, and it disappeared like that. ... But then you have one child, but you don't really lose them — they just are in a different shape."