Smokey Robinson opens up about affair with Diana Ross during his first marriage: 'I love her right till today'
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Smokey Robinson is detailing the agony and the ecstasy of his secret affair with Diana Ross.
The Grammy-winning singer confirmed that he had a relationship for "about a year" with Ross while married to his first wife, Claudette Rogers Robinson, in a recent interview with The Guardian.
"We were working together and it just happened. But it was beautiful. She's a beautiful lady, and I love her right till today. She's one of my closest people," Robinson recalled. "She was young and trying to get her career together. I was trying to help her. I brought her to Motown, in fact. I wasn't going after her and she wasn't going after me. It just happened."
Gregg DeGuire/WireImage Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross
Robinson explained that it was Ross who ultimately decided to end things. "After we'd been seeing each other for a while, Diana said to me she couldn't do that because she knew Claudette, and she knew I still loved my wife," he said. "And I did. I loved my wife very much."
The "Cruisin'" singer explained that as he's gotten older he's come to learn that "we are capable of loving more than one person at the same time," even if it's been "made taboo by us. By people."
"It's not because one person isn't worthy or they don't live up to what you expect — it has to do with feelings," he said. "If we could control love, nobody would love anybody. Nobody would take that chance. Why would you put your heart out there for somebody to be able to hurt you like that and make you able to have those feelings?"
Robinson, who was married to Claudette from 1959 until 1986, previously opened up about his romance with Ross during an interview with YouTube channel VladTV in January.
"It lasted probably longer than it should've because I was married at the time," he confessed. "That happened later. That happened after I got married. After I got [the Supremes] signed up with Motown and all that."
Following his 1986 divorce, Robinson married Frances Gladney in 2002. Ross has similarly been married twice throughout her life: first to music executive Robert Ellis Silberstein, from 1971 until 1977, and again to Norwegian businessman Arne Naess Jr., from 1985 to 2000.
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