Cher believes in life after love, and she’s packed a lot of both into her 79 years.
But love—be it romantic or familial—so often goes hand-in-hand with heartbreak, and the iconic entertainer has experienced her share of that, too.
Cher’s musician son Elijah Blue Allman, her only child with second husband Gregg Allman, has been struggling, at times more publicly than others. About 18 months ago, his mother unsuccessfully tried to secure a conservatorship to oversee his affairs, and he was hospitalized June 14 after sheriff’s deputies responded to a call about “a male subject acting erratically” at a Landers, Calif., residence.
“Deputies located drugs inside the home and Allman was transported to the hospital,” the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. “The investigation is ongoing.”
Cher hasn’t publicly commented, but Elijah’s estranged wife said that the 48-year-old has been valiantly fighting an ongoing battle.
“While it is true that Elijah has faced personal challenges in the past, one constant has been his unwavering commitment to sobriety and his loyalty to those he loves,” Marieangela KingAllman, who married the rock scion in 2013 and filed for divorce in 2021, told People. “Like many, he continues to confront his inner struggles—but it is important to recognize that he does so from a place of strength, not defeat.”
Elijah has been candid about substance abuse, telling Entertainment Tonight in 2014, “I started with drugs around the same time that we all did, around 11. I mean it’s just what you did, it’s just what everybody did.”
He started with marijuana and ecstasy, he said, but eventually turned to harder drugs, “just looking to escape all the things in my past.” At the time, Elijah said he’d been sober since 2008.
It was his father Gregg’s drug use that put a stake in his marriage to Cher in 1979 after less than four years of matrimony.
“I loved him so much and he was so wonderful. He was this amazing man who happened to be a heroin addict,” she told USA Today in November, quipping, “I guess you can’t have everything.”
And while Cher isn’t a teetotaler, she said she “didn’t see the fun” in hard drugs.
“I remember I called my doctor once and asked, ‘Can you die from a hangover?’ Drugs were boring to me,” she explained. “Gregory was quite an intelligent man, but sometimes he wasn’t able to put things together because of drugs. He was beautiful. We used to lay in bed and he would play his guitar.”
Gregg, who died of complications from liver cancer in 2017, was Cher’s second husband, while she was his third of six wives. In addition to half-brother Chaz Bono, Cher’s son with first ex-husband Sonny Bono, Elijah’s got four other siblings on his dad’s side.
So while those numbers may make Cher’s family tree look relatively sparse, she planted roots all her own. Here is what to know about Cher’s spouses, kids and more:
Mother Georgia Holt
While Cher has shared fond memories about her love affairs with very famous men—Warren Beatty, Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer—and she appreciates a good relationship, the idea of marrying a lot didn’t appeal to her.
Not least because her mom Georgia Holt was married seven times, including twice to her first husband, Cher’s father John Sarkisian.
“It’s hard to make sense of, but getting a husband was the go-to thing for women of that generation,” the Oscar and Grammy winner wrote in 2024’s Cher: The Memoir, Part One. “It seems like Mom never quite lost that feeling that there was safety in marriage.”
Meanwhile, Cher recalled, “Even though all these stepfathers and suitors passed through our lives, I barely remember a man in the house.” So while Georgia’s life taught her eldest daughter how to be “resilient, independent and adaptable,” Cher added, “it also showed me that marriage was rarely all it was cracked up to be.”
A good partnership, however, was possible. With a younger man, preferably. Georgia, who died in 2022 at the age of 96, was with boyfriend Craig Spencer—who was 22 years her junior—for the last 46 years of her life.
Cher noted in her book that she and Craig “didn’t get along in the beginning,” but it was admittedly nice to see her mother “happy and in a loving relationship.”
As time went by, Cher wrote, “we became good friends and still are.”
Huband Sonny Bono
Cher was 18 when she married 29-year-old Salvatore “Sonny” Bono on Oct. 27, 1964, and they divorced just six years later—but the entity that was Sonny & Cher endured.
At one point, more than 30 million people were tuning in weekly to watch the “I Got You Babe” singers yuk it up on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour—height jokes directed at 5-foot-5 Sonny always killed—and the couple sold more than 40 million records. Which is why they kept performing together even after their divorce in 1975.
Though if she could turn back time, it’s unclear whether she would have married Sonny all over again, describing him in her memoir as growing increasingly controlling, unfaithful and, at times, abusive as he struggled with a painkiller addiction.
“I don’t know if it was love-hate, but it was rough,” Cher told USA Today in November 2024. “It was really, really rough.”
“I didn’t understand him,” Cher continued, “and I was hurt and angry, but it was more hurt because I couldn’t understand, why would you do this? And in the end, in that last year, I just thought, I don’t think I can do this much longer because it’s killing me.”
Sonny, who was divorced from Donna Rankin when he married Cher, went on to marry twice more. He served as mayor of Palm Springs, Calif., from 1988 until1992 and then was elected to Congress in 1995, representing California’s 44th district. He was 62 when he died in a skiing accident in 1998, and his fourth wife Mary Bono won his U.S. House seat in a special election.
Son Chaz Bono
Sonny and Cher’s son Chaz Bono was born March 4, 1969, and was introduced to the world on his parents’ TV show.
Chaz released one album with the band Ceremony in 1993, but he put music on the back burner to focus on LGBTQ+ activism, having come out to his parents as gay at 18 and then publicly confirming in 2009 that he was transitioning.
He shared his journey in the 2011 documentary Becoming Chaz and competed on Dancing With the Stars, finishing seventh and becoming the first transgender man to figure prominently on a network TV show for a purpose other than being trans.
Chaz has also written several books and acted in the likes of American Horror Story: Roanoke, AHS:Cult, The Bold and the Beautiful and Curb Your Enthusiasm, as well as in multiple indie horror films.
Cher, an icon to gay and straight fans alike, as well as a legendary ally of the LGBTQ+ community, has admitted it “wasn’t easy” when Chaz began his transition.
“Like I remember calling, and the old message—the old Chaz message was on the phone — and that was very difficult,” she told CNN’s Christiana Amanpour in 2020. “But then you have one child, but you don’t really lose them — they just are in a different shape.”
But she was there for him, and Chaz told Oprah Winfrey in 2016 that his relationship with his mom was “really good.”
Husband Gregg Allman
Cher married musician Gregg Allman on June 30, 1975—three days after her divorce from Bono was finalized.
They met when Cher attended an Allman Brothers concert at Los Angeles’ Troubadour club and, as she detailed in her book, he spied her in the crowd and sent her a note with his phone number, inviting her to come back the following night.
“Oh my God, I was so crazy about Gregory,” Cher told USA Today in 2024. “I loved him so much and he was so wonderful. He was this amazing man who happened to be a heroin addict.”
She filed for divorce nine days after their wedding, according to Cher’s memoir, but they reconciled when he went to rehab.
“He said he found it impossible to be all that he thought I wanted him to be,” Cher wrote. “I really didn’t want him to be anything but sober.”
They divorced for good in 1978 after Cher, who still loved him very much (“for the right reasons and the wrong,” she wrote), decided she couldn’t risk having the kids around his erratic behavior.
Cher was Gregg’s third wife and he married four more times before his death in 2017 at 69 from complications of liver cancer.
Son Elijah Skye Blue Allman
During their brief union, Cher and Gregg welcomed son Elijah Skye Blue Allman on July 10, 1976.
While Elijah was born in L.A., in her book Cher detailed going into premature labor weeks ahead of schedule while still in Hawaii, where she was staying with Chaz and friends while Gregg was, once again, in rehab.
Doctors stopped her contractions and, five weeks later, she flew home—with Gregg, out of treatment by then, and her OBGYN, who flew to Hawaii to accompany her back to California—and she was ultimately induced when her due date came and went.
Gregg chose the name Elijah “and I chose the rest,” Cher wrote, “because when I was in that Hawaiian hospital fighting to keep him, all I could see out of the window was blue sky.”
Elijah followed his parents into music, first playing guitar on tour with his mother’s backing band and appearing in her 1989 video for “If I Turn Back Time” when he was 13.
In addition to playing with acts including Thirty Seconds to Mars and Korn, he has released four albums with his industrial rock band Deadsy.
Elijah married British KING singer Marieangela King in 2013 but has been struggling lately on the personal front.
Marieangela—who filed for divorce in 2021— alleged in a 2023 court filing that Cher had arranged for Elijah to be kidnapped from a hotel room in November 2022, while they were in the middle of working on their marriage.
Cher denied it without further comment. But, she told People that October, “I’m not suffering from any problem that millions of people in the United States aren’t. I’m a mother. This is my job—one way or another, to try to help my children. You do anything for your children. Whenever you can help them, you just do it because that’s what being a mother is.”
Her attempt to get a conservatorship to manage Elijah’s financial affairs was denied in January 2024. On June 14, 2025, the 48-year-old was hospitalized after San Bernardino Sheriff’s deputies responded to a call of a man acting erratically at a Landers, Calif., residence and found drugs in the home, according to authorities.
“While it is true that Elijah has faced personal challenges in the past, one constant has been his unwavering commitment to sobriety and his loyalty to those he loves,” Marieangela said in a statement to People. “Like many, he continues to confront his inner struggles — but it is important to recognize that he does so from a place of strength, not defeat.”
And no matter the state of their relationship, she added, “I will always root for him.”
Boyfriend Alexander Edwards
Cher has been dating music executive Alexander Edwards, who’s 40 years her junior, since 2022.
“On paper, it’s kind of ridiculous,” Cher said on The Kelly Clarkson Show that December. “But in real life, we get along great. He’s fabulous. And I don’t give men qualities that they don’t deserve.”
And maybe older men simply can’t handle all the woman that is Cher.
“I have had a couple boyfriends that were hovering around my age, but they just didn’t like me for some reason,” she told Kelly Clarkson. “And maybe younger men don’t care if you’re funny or outrageous and want to do stupid things, and you have the strong personality. I’m not giving up my personality for anybody, okay?”
And they’re still going strong.
“We just get each other,” Cher told Extra in October 2023. “We have the same kind of sense of humor. We just have a good time. He’s a little bit more, obviously, shy than I am. He’s kind of…a little bit reserved.”
Though admittedly their points of reference can’t help but diverge.
“Sometimes I’m talking to him,” Cher explained, “and he has no idea who I’m talking about.”
Sure, he knows unavoidable legends like Clark Gable, she said with a smile, “but most of my references, he’ll look at me and go, ‘I wasn’t born yet.’”
Edwards keeps their relationship details super private on his end, but when approached by TMZ at the airport in May 2024, his status update was, “Listen, we happy. We’re a happy family.”
The record producer also shares son Slash Edwards, born in October 2019, with ex-girlfriend Amber Rose.
Discussing how she spent the holidays on Jimmy Kimmel Live in January, Cher said they had about 25 people over, including “kids that are really cute, and I have a cute little friend, a close friend Slash, who’s my boyfriend’s son and he’s really, really cute.”
