Cher opened up about her relationship ups and downs with ex-husband Gregg Allman in her new memoir.
“I didn’t know whether my relationship with Gregory would last or not. I was living each day as it came,” the singer, 78, wrote in Cher: The Memoir — Part One. “Then I found out I was pregnant, and we decided to get married.”
Cher recalled how the couple’s nuptials were “arranged within a few days.” She told two of her friends and they joined her in Las Vegas for the ceremony that was “over in minutes.” She and Allman, who died in 2017 at age 69, posed for photos then flew “straight back home.”
“I was no longer Cher Bono but Cher Allman, Gregory’s third wife,” she wrote. “There was little about our wedding day that was romantic. There would be no honeymoon.”
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In the book, which hits shelves on Tuesday, November 19, Cher explained that after Allman left one morning, she looked through his Dopp kit and allegedly found a “plastic bag full of white powder.” While Cher had been by Allman’s side throughout his addiction struggles, finding the substance was a breaking point for her as she was expecting their first baby together. (Cher was already the mother to Chaz, whom she shared with ex Sonny Bono.)
After seeing her doctor for a checkup, Cher was told by multiple friends that Allman planned to divorce her. When she confronted Allman about it, the “Believe” singer claimed he “lied and denied it.” She filed for divorce the following day.
Allman subsequently checked into rehab and Cher turned to Bono, as the two exes remained friends after their split. When Allman asked Cher to visit him in rehab, Bono encouraged her to go. At the facility, Cher joined Allman for a therapy session where he opened up about feeling the “pressure to be Mr. Cher.”
Following the breakthrough therapy moment, the pair reconciled and ended up going to Jamaica for a “belated honeymoon.” During the trip, Cher claimed that she witnessed Allman drinking rum and the twosome got into an intense argument. Cher ultimately left the vacation early.
Not long after, Cher discovered that Allman was also a heroin addict and offered him an ultimatum to go to rehab again before their baby arrived.
“I don’t remember what date I’d chosen exactly. It was something arbitrary,” she wrote. “I had had it with us repeating the same pattern again and again, and had told him over the phone, ‘I’m just so tired of doing this, Gregory. I’m so tired of going to rehab with you.’ He was quiet on the other end of the line. ‘But I keep going,’ he said softly. His answer stopped me in my tracks, because it was true. He kept going to rehab, kept trying to get clean, kept making an effort despite failing in the past. In that moment, instead of thinking of my own exhaustion, I empathized with him.”
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The couple welcomed son Elijah in July 1976. However, after bringing Elijah home, Cher noticed that Allman began to have behaviors that she did not want their child exposed to.
“That point came soon after, when Gregory had a paranoid breakdown one night and insisted he saw men with guns in the backyard. ‘This is the last straw,’ I thought,” she claimed. “Whatever he is now, it’s not safe for kids. It only happened once, but I couldn’t risk it.”
Cher and Allman separated for a second time and went through with their divorce in 1978.
Cher: The Memoir — Part One hit shelves on Tuesday, November 19.
