Random Music Power Couples Who Didn't Break Up (14 items)

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  (#6) Gloria & Emilio Estefan

  Gloria Fajardo García and Emilio Estefan, both Cuban immigrants, met at a jam session in Miami in 1975; "In comes Emilio. He’s playing the accordion in very short shorts, and he looked like he was [unclothed], so that was the first impression that I got," Gloria explained in 2017. A few months later, he asked her to join his wedding band, the Miami Latin Boys. They married in 1978 and had two children.

  They changed the name of the band to Miami Sound Machine and signed to CBS Records. After spending five years touring Latin America performing their music that fused pop with Cuban rhythms, Gloria came up with the idea of doing their music in English. Although record label executives complained that the group was "too Cuban for Americans and too American for Cubans," Gloria's idea worked; in 1985, "Conga" landed in Billboard's Dance, R&B and Hot 100 charts all at the same time and turned the band into international stars. On Your Feet!, a jukebox musical based on the couple's lives that premiered on Broadway in 2015, received four Tony nominations.

  In 2019, Gloria told PEOPLE why the relationship has worked for more than 40 years, “We’re different, but we balance each other. And we have the same priorities, the same values. We rarely argue about business or music, so it’s been a good thing.”
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  (#7) Kurt Cobain & Courtney Love

  There are conflicting stories about when Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love first met (in one interview, Love said it was in Portland, OR, in the early '80s , another source said it was at Portland's Satyricon nightclub in 1990 where his band was playing a gig, another claimed it was at an L7 concert in 1989 and yet another said it was at a concert in Los Angeles in May 1991). What everyone seems to agree on is that it was Love who aggressively pursued a relationship with the Nirvana frontman. She got his number and called him, told interviewers she had a crush on him, and even persuaded someone who wanted to manage her band Hole to get her plane and concert tickets so she could attend a Nirvana concert in Chicago. “People say, ‘How did she get Kurt?’" one friend of Love's told Vanity Fair in 1992. “Well, she asked. And she wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  Love's and Cobain's relationship became serious soon after these albums came out, and by the time he proposed, she was pregnant. Kurt wore pajamas and Courtney a dress that ill-fated actress Frances Farmer had once wore in a movie. Their daughter Frances Bean was born without any health issues in August 1992. But because of the drug rumors, child welfare services did an investigation and the couple briefly had their infant daughter taken away from them, although they regained custody after a legal engagement.

  On March 18, 1994, Love phoned the Seattle police claiming Cobain was a threat to himself; when they arrived, they confiscated three guns and several bottles of pills from him, but he denied he wanted to end his life. Soon afterward, Love arranged an intervention that resulted in Cobain agreeing to go to a rehabilitation center. On April 1, he called Love. According to her , he ended the call by saying, "Just remember, no matter what, I love you." That was the last time she ever spoke to him; the next day he hopped over the wall of the rehabilitation center and disappeared. Love hired a private detective and his mother filed a missing persons' report, but although people claimed to have seen him in Seattle, it wasn't until April 8 that his body was found in his home.

  Many of Cobain's friends and fans blamed Love, making accusations such as she had driven him to end his life or that she had hired a hitman to end him. At her shows, she would have things thrown at her on stage. She even received fatal threats. In a 2006 interview, Love admitted that Kim Gordon [of Sonic Youth] had warned her , "'If you marry him [Cobain] your life is not going to happen, it will destroy your life.' But I said, 'Whatever, I love him, and I want to be with him!'"
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  (#4) Beyoncé & Jay-Z

  Beyoncé and Jay-Z (real name Shawn Carter) are notorious for trying to keep their relationship private; this was especially true in the early years. They reportedly started dating in 2002 after collaborating on his song "03 Bonnie & Clyde." They were married very quietly on April 4, 2008; as the couple said nothing publicly, it wasn't until the signed marriage license was found several days later that the media and public got any confirmation that the two artists had, indeed, wed.

  The couple's relationship has not always been smooth; Beyoncé's album Lemonade and Jay-Z's album 4:44 both addressed the couple's marital problems. "Sorry," the second single off of Lemonade, has lyrics that revolve around the protagonist dealing with her partner's affair with a woman named "Becky"; although neither artist has said that the song was about Jay-Z's infidelity, he later admitted that he had been unfaithful and that the couple had sought counseling. In fact, rumors about Jay-Z's cheating have been rampant for years, dating back to when the couple was dating, and his infamous 2014 fight in an elevator with his sister-in-law was said to be over his numerous infidelities. Meanwhile, the lyrics to his 2013 single "Holy Grail" suggest that Beyoncé may have strayed as well.

  But the couple has fought to try and save their marriage. In an interview with CNN in early 2018, Jay-Z talked about this, calling his wife his "soulmate." He went on to say that couples that experience problems could either address those problems or pretend they don't exist, "For us, we chose to fight for our love. For our family. To give our kids a different outcome. To break that cycle for Black men and women." He added, "We were never a celebrity couple - we were a couple that happened to be celebrities. We are real people."

  The couple has collaborated numerous times, beginning with her being featured on his song "03 Bonnie & Clyde." He was featured on "Crazy in Love," her first ever No. 1 song as a solo artist. He was featured on the lead single ("Deja Vu") off her second solo album, and on "Drunk in Love," which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2013. They have also co-headlined two tours (On the Run Tour in 2014 and On the Run II Tour in 2018). In 2018, they released "Family Feud," their collaboration from his 4:44 album and, billed as The Carters (his last name), they released the album Everything Is Love.
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  (#9) John Lennon & Yoko Ono

  John Lennon and Yoko Ono first met at an art gallery in London, where Ono was preparing an exhibit of her conceptual art, in November 1966. Both were married to other people at the time, but they started a romantic relationship sometime prior to May 1968, when Lennon's wife, Cynthia, discovered Ono sitting in the Lennons' kitchen wearing Cynthia's bathrobe. The Lennons divorced later that year; a few months later, Ono divorced her husband. Lennon and Ono married on March 20, 1969; during their honeymoon, they staged as series of protests against the Vietnam War which they dubbed "Bed-ins for Peace." Some of the press and fans of the Beatles treated Ono badly, calling her racist names. And although the band had started to fall apart before Lennon started bringing Ono to their studio sessions, she received much of the blame when the Beatles broke up in April 1970.

  Lennon and Ono collaborated on multiple musical projects, including: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins (1968), which became infamous for the couple appearing unclothed on the album cover, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970) and Double Fantasy (1980). The couple moved to New York City, but when they separated in 1973, Lennon moved to Los Angeles with his mistress May Pang; Lennon referred to this 18-month separation as his "lost weekend." He and Ono reconciled in early 1975 and their son Sean was born in October of that year. After his son's birth, Lennon retired from music temporarily to help raise Sean.

  His collaborative project with Ono, the Double Fantasy double album, was meant to mark the start of Lennon's musical comeback. Tragically, he was slain outside of the couple's apartment building on December 8, 1980. He was just 40 years old. In the years since his passing, Ono has worked to keep her husband's legacy alive and has also seen numerous gallery retrospectives of her artwork.
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  (#3) Paul & Linda McCartney

  Linda Eastman was trying to build a career as a celebrity photographer when she first met Paul McCartney while on assignment in London in 1967; in fact, one year later, she became the first woman to have a photo on the cover of Rolling Stone. They married on March 12, 1969 , eight days before John Lennon and Yoko Ono married. The wives of the Beatles had never been treated all that well by the fans and when the band broke up in 1970, both Ono and Eastman got some of the blame. McCartney adopted Eastman's daughter from her first marriage, and the couple had three children of their own.

  The couple had no interest in spending any time apart; reportedly the only time they did so during their marriage was the 10 days McCartney spent in a Tokyo jail after he was taken in for having pot. Linda claimed McCartney had to convince her to collaborate with him. "It was hard work, and he really did have to force me ,” she admitted in a 1989 interview. “And it was very tough on me. It’s nothing I elbowed my way into." In the same interview, she said her husband was a hard taskmaster when it came to his music. “He had me singing on (his 1971 album) Ram , and he’d be like, 'Come on, get it together!’ It was nerve-racking because, since I wasn’t a good student, why would I be a good, in-tune singer? He’d get me in tune , but I found it hard.” She learned how to play keyboards and joined his first post-Beatles band, Wings. It turned out to be a very commercially successful band and received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Album ( Band on the Run ) in 1975.

  Linda McCartney passed because of complications related to breast cancer in 1998. Since her passing McCartney has remarried twice and pursued his successful solo career; at 77 years of age, he is still selling out shows.
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  (#2) Bruce Springsteen & Patti Scialfa

  Bruce Springsteen first met Patti Scialfa at The Stone Pony, the famed Asbury Park, NJ, bar, in 1980. "It was the start of a beautiful friendship," Scialfa has said. In 1984 she auditioned for, and won, the job as backup singer on Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A tour. He warned her he had never had a woman in his band before and wasn't sure if it would work out. 

  Although Scialfa started touring with Springsteen, their relationship did not immediately blossom into romance. Instead, he married actress Julianne Phillips in 1985. But the marriage was rocky, and Phillips soon filed for divorce after seeing tabloid photos of Scialfa with Springsteen. Scialfa and Springsteen had their son Evan in 1990 and married the following year; two more kids followed.

  Scialfa once said, "When you’re married to someone famous, people know you, but they’re not really seeing you.” Others describe her as very down-to-earth and very independent. Very much her own person. Springsteen has said that it isn't hard to work with his wife because they've developed natural boundaries to separate their personal lives from their professional work. He also credited Scialfa with being strong enough and stable enough to help him through his bouts with depression. In his biography Born To Run, he admitted that Scialfa would see "a freight train bearing down, loaded with nitroglycerin and running quickly out of track."

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