Personal life of Marvin Gaye

Marvin first met Anna Ruby Gordy (January 28, 1922 – January 31, 2014), 17 years his senior, while Marvin was a staff drummer for the label, Anna Records, around 1960. The pair began their romantic courtship shortly after Marvin was signed to Motown Records in 1961. According to Anna in a 1987 interview, their relationship started by Marvin flirting with her to get her attention.[13] After a two-year courtship, the couple married on June 8, 1963, in Chicago.[14]

During Gaye's early years in Motown, he was inspired by his relationship with his wife, often writing songs dedicated to her, including his 1963 top ten hit, "Pride and Joy". Of that song, Gaye later told David Ritz, "When I composed 'Pride and Joy', I was head over heels in love with Anna. I just wrote what I felt about her, and what she did for me. She was my pride and joy."[15] The marriage was reportedly volatile and according to Gaye's biographer David Ritz, Anna was physically and verbally abusive to her younger husband. By the turn of the 1970s, however, Marvin had begun to counter his wife's attacks. Rumors of infidelity also deeply soured the marriage and later influenced Gaye's later recordings, including his 1968 number one hit, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine".[16]

Though admittedly not much of a songwriter or composer, unlike her younger sister Gwen Gordy, she did provide ideas to some of her husband's compositions, most notably the songs later made successful by The Originals, including the hits "Baby I'm for Real" and "The Bells". Anna also was partially credited for the song "God is Love" from Marvin's What's Going On album. An earlier song, "Just to Keep You Satisfied", was also credited to her as well as Marvin and their friend, Kenneth Stover, who was also credited for "God is Love". By 1973, following Gaye's legal separation from Anna, Marvin rewrote the lyrics to the song changing it from a romantic ode to an emotional ballad documenting the end of their marriage. The couple relocated to Los Angeles in late 1972 and Marvin filed for legal separation in the winter of 1973, shortly before Marvin met Janis Hunter. In November 1975, Anna filed for divorce. A contentious divorce case followed for a year and a half before it was finalized on March 17, 1977.

In the divorce decree, Gaye agreed to remit a portion of his royalties to go to Anna for his next album. That album, Here, My Dear, was released to dismal sales in December 1978.[17] Despite being so hurt by the album that she considered filing a privacy lawsuit in 1979, Anna eventually forgave Marvin and the former couple would maintain a close friendship until Marvin's untimely death.

On November 17, 1966, a baby boy was born to Denise Gordy, just days after her seventeenth birthday. The boy was subsequently adopted by Marvin and Anna. The boy was christened at Detroit's Bethel AME Church and was named after his adopted father.[18] Prior to Marvin III's birth, 44-year-old Anna had faked a pregnancy in public.[19] It was later reported that Gordy was told that she could not naturally conceive a child.[20] Despite his acrimonious relationship with his father, he named him Marvin III "to keep up with tradition".[21] Denise Gordy admitted in 1998 that she had mothered Marvin III.[19] Marvin III later learned of this development shortly after his father passed. Due to Marvin not filing a will before his death, Marvin III became a co-executor of his father's estate at just 17. In 1995, Gaye III welcomed his first son, Marvin IV, on the 56th anniversary of his father's birth. Five years later, a second boy Dylan, was born.[22]

Gaye met 17-year-old Janis Hunter (born January 5, 1956) in March 1973 while working on his Let's Get It On album with producer Ed Townsend. Hunter was the child of jazz musician Slim Gaillard. Townsend's former girlfriend Barbara Hunter arrived in the studio with Janis that month. Janis's presence served as inspiration for Gaye during the making of the album. After their first date, Gaye was inspired to record the composition, "If I Should Die Tonight".[23] The couple later moved in together, first to Gaye's one-room apartment outside Hollywood and then at Topanga Canyon.[24] During Gaye's 1974 concert tour, he performed the ballad, "Jan", to his new love. Janis first received public notice when she was featured with Marvin on a November 1974 issue of Ebony.[25]

On September 4, 1974, the couple welcomed their first-born, daughter Nona, in Los Angeles.[26] Son Frankie Christian followed a year later on November 16, 1975, a day before Marvin III's and his namesake uncle's birthday.[27] After Gaye's divorce to Gordy was finalized, Gaye married Janis in October 1977 in New Orleans. It was alleged Gaye married her due to concurrent tax issues,[28][29] but Janis would contend they married after surviving a car accident. Janis later stated Gaye sometimes coerced her into having relationships with other men. The contents of Gaye's 1976 album, I Want You, was heavily inspired by Gaye and Hunter's torrid affair. Author Michael Eric Dyson stated that their relationship in inspiration to the creation of I Want You was "nearly palpable in the sensual textures that are the album's aural and lyrical signature".[29]

Their "open" marriage, domestic abuse and the couple's drug dependence became too disastrous and Janis filed for legal separation in 1979. Janis later admitted she went "back and forth across the ocean, around and around, just chasing this relationship that never worked, but I wasn't willing to give up and neither was he."[28] Despite divorcing in February 1981, the former couple kept in touch and tried to renew a relationship during Gaye's final tour only to separate after another argument, having their final conversations by phone prior to Gaye's death.[29] In 1997, Nona Gaye had a son, Nolan Pentz.

During the 1960s, it was often debated that Gaye dated his female singing companions such as Mary Wells and Kim Weston; Wells denied any romantic ties to Gaye and Weston later stated their relationship was strictly platonic.[30] The same was said of Gaye's relationship with his most successful duet partner Tammi Terrell. Gaye was deeply devastated following Terrell's collapse at a concert in Virginia where they were performing in 1967. Terrell's later diagnosis and death from a brain tumor would help to send Gaye to a depression. Gaye often blamed himself for Terrell's illness and death despite the fact that Terrell may have developed her tumor since her early childhood.[31] Gaye's devastation over Terrell's death fueled his cocaine addiction.[32]

Following Gaye's separation from Janis, Gaye began dating Dutch-based model Eugenie Vis for two years. Gaye was also involved with British socialite Lady Edith Foxwell during the early 1980s. At one point, according to author Bernard J. Taylor, Foxwell explained that her and Gaye's relationship became serious enough to consider marriage by 1982.[33] Gaye's final girlfriend was an Englishwoman named Deborah Decker.[34] In 1984 Decker later told Parade magazine that she carried Gaye's unborn child during Gaye's final year alive.[34] When family tension became too much, Gaye moved her to an apartment in West Hollywood.[34] Decker later miscarried Gaye's child.[34]