Beloved “American Idol” judge Lionel Richie has a fascinating relationship history, but he was first married to his college sweetheart, Brenda Harvey, in 1975. The pair were married before Richie became a megastar. As his star rose, he found life in Hollywood, California, to be very different from what it had been back in Tuskegee, Alabama.
Lionel Richie Discusses Marriage in Hollywood
Richie reflected on how he was approached by women who made advances to him. When he informed them he was married, they were not deterred. “When I was getting my start in LA, my first reaction was, ‘How stupid are these people? They get married and divorced every week,'” he wrote in his new memoir, “Truly,” People reports. “That’s not to say love wasn’t involved. It’s just that you’re a star and you have a long line of candidates wanting to be your next one and only.”
He continued, “In Tuskegee, if you met someone at a party, all you had to say was, ‘I’m married’, and the woman would be, ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t know,’ and back away.” But in Hollywood, it was completely different. He recalled a time, even before he became super famous, when a woman in Los Angeles hit on him, and he informed her that he was married. Her reaction shocked him.
“She came back with a question I didn’t expect. ‘Is she with you?'” he wrote.
Lionel Richie’s Marriage History
Richie and Harvey adopted their daughter, Nicole Richie, during their time together. Her adoption was made official when she was nine years old, but she had been living with the couple before this, Biography reports. She is the biological daughter of musician Peter Escovedo and assistant Karen Moss.
Richie’s relationship with Harvey ended in 1993. After Harvey and Richie’s split, the “Stuck on You” singer married fashion designer Diane Alexander in 1995. The pair share two children, Miles Brockman Richie and Sofia Richie. Richie and Alexander split in 2004. He has not remarried in over 20 years, but he is dating Lisa Parigi.
In his memoir, Richie discussed the complications of having a marriage in the spotlight and how he was unprepared for the pressure it would put on his relationships. “They don’t teach you in Alabama how to tell the real one from the fake. My observations were through the lens of a perpetual college student. I imagined how others had to feel after falling for temptation but thought I was immune. Or wished that I was,” he shared in an honest summary of his actions.
