Strange Things About Ozzy And Sharon Osbourne's Relationship

The world lost a true original on July 22, 2025, when heavy metal icon Ozzy Osbourne died at the age of 76. Osbourne left behind an impressive legacy, both as a solo artist and as frontman for trailblazing metal band Black Sabbath. Then, of course, there was his unexpected turn to reality television, becoming an unlikely TV star along wife Sharon and their family on "The Osbournes," one of the hottest TV hits of the 2000s. As viewers invited the family into their homes, it became clear why Ozzy and Sharon had been the ultimate power couple of rock and roll for 40 years.

Since 1982, the couple raised three kids: Jack, Aimee, and Kelly. Ozzy is also the biological father of two children from his first marriage to Thelma Riley — Jessica and Louis — in addition to being the adoptive dad of Elliot Kingsley, Riley's son from a previous relationship. With his older kids living in England, and Aimee opting to sit it out, only Kelly and Jack appeared with Sharon and Ozzy on "The Osbournes."

Since then, he and Sharon have had their ups and downs, with the couple's high profile ensuring every bump (including an attempted murder) in the road was meticulously chronicled by the media. Looking back at their decades together, it's safe to say there were some strange things about Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne's relationship.

In February 1982, Ozzy Osbourne was arrested for public intoxication when he relieved himself on a statue across from the Alamo building in San Antonio, Texas. According to Sharon Osbourne in "The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne," her husband was on a bender and wanted to join his friends at the bar once she was asleep. In an effort to keep him in, Sharon hid his clothes, but he couldn't be stopped. The Prince of Darkness donned one of Sharon's dresses and headed out.

The rocker showed up to a photoshoot at the Alamo the next day still wearing the dress. "I wanted to take a pee, so I found this old wall, I thought it was an old alleyway, and I started to pee," Ozzy said. He was actually peeing on the Cenotaph, which was built to honor those who died defending the Alamo, and was arrested on the spot.

Per Loudwire, his bail was set at $40, so he was released in time to play a gig that night. For ten years, Ozzy was banned from performing in the city. In 1992, he made a donation of $10,000 to the Alamo's maintenance organization, apologized in public (and was forgiven), and gave two free concerts in San Antonio.

Ozzy Osbourne tried to kill Sharon Osbourne at the height of his drug and alcohol addiction in 1989. The couple opened up about the experience in the A&E series "Biography: The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne" (via Insider). Ozzy does not remember the incident, only waking up in a jail cell where he learned he was facing attempted murder charges. Sharon, however, remembers vividly.

"We've come to a decision that you've got to die," Sharon recalled Ozzy saying before lunged at her and strangled her. "He was calm — very, very calm," she said. "... I felt the stuff on the table and felt the panic button and just pressed it. Next thing I know the cops were there."

"It's not exactly one of my greatest f***ing achievements," Ozzy admitted. Although this could've been the end of Sharon's life, she decided to drop the charges against her husband, which Ozzy was "very, very surprised" about. But the judge did put Ozzy on the path to recovery and sentenced him to six months in rehab.

Ozzy Osbourne struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for about 40 years of his life. In 1996, he told Howard Stern that Sharon Osbourne once tricked him into going to rehab by telling him that he would learn how to drink "properly" in the program. At that time, Ozzy seemed to be just going through the motions of treatment. He went through this vicious cycle for years, leading to arrests and a murder attempt.

Ozzy did well for awhile but confessed that he relapsed on alcohol and drugs in 2013, prompting him and Sharon to consider separating (per Rolling Stone). "For the last year and a half I have been drinking and taking drugs," Ozzy wrote on Facebook. "I was in a very dark place and was an a**hole to the people I love most, my family. However, I am happy to say that I am now 44 days sober," the musician added, along with an apology.

A 2021 Variety interview captured Ozzy after around seven years of sobriety. "There's nothing special about me," he admitted. "I should have been dead 1,000 times," he said.

Sharon Osbourne, who was overwhelmed with grief at Ozzy's funeral, revealed on "The Talk" that she once slit her wrists to prove her love for Ozzy Osbourne. She said she was 27 years old at the time, and was dating and on tour with Ozzy despite him being a married father of two with Thelma Riley.

"When we first got together, we would drink a lot," Sharon told her then-co-hosts. "We had a session of romance, drinking, partying. It's about 4 in the morning and he says to me, 'How much do you really love me? I don't know if this relationship is gonna last.' And I'm saying to him, 'I'd do anything for you, anything, I absolutely adore you. ... I'd give my life for you.'" She said she grabbed a steak knife from a room service cart and cut her wrists ... deeper than she meant to, she admitted on the talk show.

The couple ended up having to call an ambulance, and Sharon was taken into a psych ward because doctors believed her declaration of love was a suicide attempt. "These scars are a big embarrassment," Sharon said, showing the camera her wrist. She added, "It's like, grow up ... It's sad, pathetic on a 61-year-old... Please let it go away already."

Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne are live together, die together, soulmates. So much so that in 2007, Sharon told the Mirror that they have an assisted suicide pact together. The couple agrees that if they get an illness that affects their brains, they would go to Switzerland for euthanasia.

"I saw my father suffer from the day he came back into my life in 2002 to the day he died in July. There's no way I could go through what he did, or put my kids through that," Sharon reasoned. The star added, "Ozzy and I have asked our lawyers to make the appropriate arrangements. It's taken away some of the fear of our ending and is a final gift of love to our kids."

Ozzy elaborated on the couple's plans when speaking with the Mirror in 2014: "If I can't live my life the way I'm living it now — not the financial side — If I can't get up and go to the bathroom myself and I've got tubes up my a** and an enema in my throat, I'll just say to Sharon, 'Turn the f***ing machine off.'"

Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne may be rock's power couple, but nobody ever said they were relationship role models. The couple has a long history of domestic abuse, thanks to their violent upbringings and shared alcohol misuse. "I used to think if you got angry it was absolutely okay to hit someone," Sharon told Event Magazine (via The Sun) in 2017. "I would wake up with my two front teeth missing," she revealed.

The celeb spoke about her troubles with Ozzy in an interview with The Guardian in 2001. "Our fights were legendary. We'd beat the s**t out of each other," she said. "At a gig, Ozzy would run off stage during a guitar solo to fight with me, then run back on to finish the song! We were in the gutter, morally, and I realized that if we both carried on, we'd wind up a washed-up pair of old drunks living in a hovel somewhere." Though it would take Ozzy more time to become sober, Sharon quit drinking after realizing what could become of her.

Ozzy Osbourne's rep released a statement noting that the rocker had a sex addiction, after reports of his multiple affairs became public in 2016, per People. The notice read in part, "...Ozzy has gone into intense therapy. Ozzy is mortified at what his behavior has done to his family. He thanks God that his incredible wife Sharon is at his side to support him."

Ozzy's mistress of four years, his longtime hair colorist Michelle Pugh, told People that the musician wanted her to exclusively see him. "When I say he gave me the greatest love of my life, I mean it," she insisted. But Ozzy's rep denied her claims, saying in a statement, "He is sorry if Ms. Pugh took their sexual relationship out of context. He would like to apologize to the other women he has been having sexual relationships with."

That same year, the "Crazy Train" singer surprised Sharon on her birthday while she was hosting "The Talk" by delivering a bouquet of flowers and a ring. She didn't open the box on the show, but showed off her new bling across the pond on "Good Morning Britain." "My husband got me a new wedding band before I left," she said, showing off the sparkler.

Sharon Osbourne admitted she was thinking about her sexuality on an episode of "The Talk" in 2016. The hosts were talking about James Franco's Vulture interview in which he said he was "a little gay." Hosts Aisha Tyler, Sheryl Underwood, and Osbourne all said they could relate to Franco's comment, with Osbourne saying, "I am not a little bit gay. I am extremely interested in the fact of what I missed out on, but too late now," per Advocate.

Some outlets, like Yahoo News, labeled her as bisexual after the comment, but Osbourne took ownership of her sexuality with Gay Star News. While she said the bisexual label didn't bother her, she clarified, "My sexual orientation is: I'm in love with my husband."

"I do truly feel that everybody at some time in their lives wonders — not that they [necessarily] act on it — what it would be like to have a sexual relationship with somebody of the same sex," she continued. "I just do. I think people who say they don't are lying."

Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne's marriage has been a rollercoaster full of drugs, affairs, fame, and fights. But every time the couple thought about going their own ways, they always came back together. Ozzy's 2013 relapse had prompted discussions of a split, per Rolling Stone. "Just to set the record straight, Sharon and I are not divorcing," Ozzy wrote in a Facebook post at the time (via Loudwire). "I'm just trying to be a better person."

In 2016, the Osbournes had to once again defend their marriage as rumors of another Ozzy relapse swirled on the internet. However, Ozzy denied that drugs were the issue."I have been sober for three and a quarter years. I have not touched drugs or alcohol in that time. Any reports that I am not sober are completely inaccurate," he told E! News.

This time, the rift came from his affair with hairstylist Michelle Pugh. The Sun reported that Sharon kicked him out of their house when she learned about his infidelity, and even missed an episode of "The Talk" over the news (via the Los Angeles Times). Ozzy reportedly went to The Beverly Hills Hotel for temporary lodging. 

Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne may always reconcile whenever hardships rock their marriage, but that doesn't mean it's always a graceful fall. After his affair with hairstylist Michelle Pugh in 2016, Sharon shaded his mistresses, telling Conan O'Brien she helped Ozzy see his mistakes. ​​"We worked it out, after I got him glasses and said: 'My god, you do need glasses. Who would do that with that?'" she quipped. "Anyway, he now wears very thick bifocals and he is fine.

In 2020, the couple told "Good Morning Britain" how Sharon once reacted to him cheating on her. "I was just really broken in every sense," Sharon told Piers Morgan. "She cut every sleeve off every coat I own," Ozzy said about Sharon's reaction to his affair. Sharon confirmed, "I said to Ozzy, 'If you ever do this to me again, I'm going to cut your hair off or I'm going to cut all your clothes.'" 

Morgan asked Ozzy which ultimatum he preferred, and he offered a sincere response: "I wish I hadn't done this stupid thing that I did to get to warrant that admin — and that's the truth. Because you never know what you've had until you've lost it, and I thought I'd lost it big time."

Ozzy Osbourne met his future wife Sharon Arden in 1970. Their eventual love affair, however, was more than a decade away; at that time, her father, Don Arden, was the manager of Black Sabbath. Employing mob-like tactics, Arden earned a reputation as one of Britain's toughest talent managers, a trait passed to his daughter. When Ozzy's drug-addled state and frequent absences became too much for his bandmates, he was kicked out of Sabbath in 1979. That was when Sharon stepped in to become his manager, concocting a plan to revive the seemingly doomed career of the Prince of Darkness by putting together a killer band — particularly guitar virtuoso Randy Rhoads — and launching him as a solo artist. 

His first solo album, "Blizzard of Ozz," became a monster hit, spending more than a year on the Billboard charts and yielding the classic single "Crazy Train." As Sharon guided Ozzy's career, catapulting him to a whole new level of success, their relationship shifted from business to romantic. Ozzy, however, was still inconveniently married to Thelma Riley, which he rectified by divorcing her in 1982. Later that same year, Ozzy and Sharon tied the knot. 

In 2022, Sharon marked their 40th wedding anniversary with a heartfelt Instagram post. "We first met when I was 18, over 52 years we have been friends, lovers, husband & wife, grandparents and soulmates," she wrote in the caption. "Always at each other's side."

It's fair to say that "The Osbournes" was more than just a TV show, quickly evolving into a pop-culture phenomenon that propelled Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne to become household names. As Ozzy told GQ, the show's massive success was a mixed blessing. "I'm glad we did it because we reached a different level of fame," he said. "But it was like Beatlemania. It wasn't fun." 

Despite having been famous for decades, Ozzy was unprepared for what television stardom actually entailed. "When you've got a hit TV show in America, that's as big as it gets, fame-wise," he wrote in his memoir, "I Am Ozzy," pointing out that the level of celebrity the show brought was bigger than that of any movie star or politician. "And a lot bigger than being the ex-lead singer of Black Sabbath," he observed. 

Having a camera crew embedded in their home eventually placed the entire family under a pretty extreme level of stress, and strained Ozzy's relationship with Sharon. "I had to bow out," he told NME in 2020. "I said to Sharon: 'I don't like the way it makes me feel, and I can't stand f***ing cameramen in my house.' I'm not upset that I did it, but I wouldn't do it again."

Fans feared that Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne's marriage was over after Ozzy was caught cheating on her with hairstylist Michelle Pugh, with whom he'd had a clandestine affair that went on for years. Ozzy and Sharon separated, but ultimately reconciled, working to put that incident behind them.

Strangely, the cheating scandal served to bring them closer together, something the pair celebrated by renewing their wedding vows in a 2017 ceremony in Las Vegas. For Ozzy, the ceremony was far more than a ritual, but a chance for a fresh start with his wife of 30-plus years. "For me, this was actually our real wedding day. This is the one that I will remember," he told Hello! Magazine. "Sharon and I have been through so much, and this honestly feels like a new beginning."

Admitting he'd messed up, Ozzy revealed that reconciling with Sharon made him realize how much he loved her — an emotion that she seconded. "It was hard to rebuild the trust, but I can't imagine my life without Ozzy," Sharon told the magazine. "The ceremony was just beautiful. We've fallen in love all over again."

Ever since the '60s, rock stars have become synonymous with excessive drug consumption, but it's hardly a secret that Ozzy Osbourne was in a league of his own in that regard. His prodigious use of whatever illicit substance he could get his hands on was well documented, and the reason he was kicked out of Black Sabbath. 

Yet according to Ozzy himself, he would likely have been among the many casualties of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle had it not been for his wife, Sharon. "It's not enough to say I love Sharon. I owe my life to Sharon," he wrote in his memoir, "I Am Ozzy."

According to Sharon, she'd experienced plenty of moments in their marriage when Ozzy's behavior would have more than justified throwing in the towel and walking away. However, she made the decision to fight for their relationship when the going got tough. "We never gave up on each other," Sharon said in an interview with People. "I mean, I wasn't a saint. Ozzy wasn't a saint. I gave him as good as he gave me. We're just meant to be."

As Ozzy Osbourne wrote in his memoir, "I Am Ozzy," he was attracted to his future wife Sharon from the moment he first laid eyes on her. "It was that wicked laugh that got me," he recalled. 

Another factor that drew them together was the fact that both were unconventional, a shared trait that they recognized in each other. "We're both oddballs," Sharon told E! News. "I might look quite normal, but normal is not a word I use often. We were two wild young people that found each other." The key to their long-lasting marriage has been their ability to accept each other for who they are, flaws and all. "They'll never be what you want them to be," Sharon said, explaining that placing unrealistic expectations on a spouse is a recipe for failure; acceptance is the key, appreciating the good parts and tolerating the bad. "If you love them enough, you'll accept it and realize that you can't change it," she observed.

It's fair to say that Ozzy and Sharon have experienced more than their fair share of tumultuous times during their marriage, but they have always managed to overcome obstacles. "You get your ugly times, your bad times, and your horrific times," she added. "But if you love each other enough, you'll work through."

If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.