Personal life of Marvin Gaye

Uncommon card · No. 179504

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) had many personal relationships throughout his life. He was married twice and had three children, one he adopted and two biological children. His first marriage to Anna Gordy Gaye inspired many of his early hits, including "Pride and Joy" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" as well as the album, Here, My Dear, released a year after their divorce in 1977. His relationship and second marriage to Jan Gaye inspired the later recordings, Let's Get It On and I Want You. Rumors of liaisons with his Motown duet partners such as Mary Wells, Kim Weston and Tammi Terrell were denied by Gaye and his partners though Gaye admitted to a very close bond with Terrell, whose 1967 stage collapse and subsequent 1970 death from a brain tumor negatively impacted Gaye's life to the point that he was consumed by depression and drug addiction. Gaye's relationship with his father, Marvin Gay Sr., was reportedly volatile with his father committing child abuse all while being raised under...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Photograph by Jim Britt, whose other (copyrighted) photos of Gaye from the same session—many of them in full color—can be seen at his website. Originally distributed by Motown Records., Public domain