Tina Turner first met her second husband Erwin Bach in 1986 and, for almost four decades, they were together as he supported the music icon in both her personal life and career.
The Queen of Rock and Roll was married twice. First to Ike Turner, who she also worked with musically, but their marriage was turbulent and she claimed that he was abusive to her. They later divorced and she met Erwin Bach, a German music producer in 1986, and the rest is history.
Tina Turner said that her husband was ‘so good looking’
Talking about when she first met Erwin, the late celebrity said that her heart “went ba-bum” and even made quite a risqué request.
They first encountered each other after he was sent by her European record label to meet her at Düsseldorf Airport.
“He had the prettiest face. It was like, ‘Where did he come from?'” she recalled. “He was so good-looking. My heart went ba-bum. It means that a soul has met.
“When he found out that I liked him, he came to America and we were in Nashville and I said to him, ‘When you come to L.A. I want you to make love to me.’ I thought that I could say that because I was a free woman. I didn’t have a boyfriend. I liked him.
“He was just so different. So laid back. So comfortable. So unpretentious, and that was the beginning of our relationship.”
Ewin had “never been the least bit intimidated”
Despite their 14-year age gap, the couple went from strength to strength. Tina said that this was helped by the fact the two had their own “freedom” and that Erwin was “never intimidated” by her career.
In her 2020 book Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good, the Proud Mary singer penned: “We grant each other freedom and space to be individuals at the same time we are a couple. Erwin, who is a force of nature in his own right, has never been the least bit intimidated by my career, my talents, or my fame.
“He shows me that true love doesn’t require the dimming of my light so that he can shine. On the contrary, we are the light of each other’s lives, and we want to shine as bright as we can, together.”
In sickness and in health
After 27 years together, Tina and Erwin tied the knot in 2013, but only weeks later she suffered a stroke that caused her to believe she would never walk again.
She explained to Oprah Winfrey in a 2018 interview: “When I came back from my honeymoon, I was determined to find out what was causing a painful feeling in my chest. I went to the hospital, and two days later, the stroke came. That was the beginning of the sickness.”
In her memoir My Love Story she explained further: “In the hospital, I didn’t believe that I couldn’t walk,” she told Oprah. “I said, ‘Bull crap.’ Then I stepped out of bed and flopped to the floor and said, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ But I wasn’t depressed — I was just determined to fix it.”
Three years later in 2016, the musician was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. Both of her kidneys were failing and only working at 20 percent.
“When the doctors said, ‘Both kidneys are out,’ I said, ‘I guess it’s my time to go.’ I was in my 70s. In my thinking, I’d lived long enough, and I didn’t want to be on a machine for the rest of my life. My mother and sister were both gone,” she told Oprah.
However, in her memoir, Tina Turner said that her husband decided to give her one of his kidneys. She said that people seemed shocked he would do something like that as they were still of the belief that “Erwin married me for my money and fame,” but Tina said he “ignored” it.
“I wondered if anyone would think that Erwin’s living donation was transactional in some way,” she wrote. “Incredibly, considering how long we had been together, there were still people who wanted to believe that Erwin married me for my money and fame. What else would a younger man want with an older woman? Erin always ignored the rumors.”
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