Cher’s Harrowing Account of Her Darkest Moments in Marriage to Sonny Bono

Whether a byproduct of the tumultuous music industry or the clashing of superstar egos, many musical “power couples” had incredibly toxic—and, at times, even abusive—dynamics, and Cher’s marriage to Sonny Bono was certainly no exception. From their first meeting when Cher was still a teenager to their subsequent divorce less than a decade later, their marriage was rife with conflict.

In Cher’s memoir, which she released in November 2024, the “Believe” singer recounted a particularly harrowing moment in her dramatic relationship with Sonny.

Cher’s Marriage to Sonny Bono Got Incredibly Dark

Although Cher would later say that her first meeting with Sonny Bono (when she was 16 and he was 27) wasn’t “love at first sight,” their relationship would become one of the most iconic of the mid-to-late 1960s and early 1970s. Indeed, Sonny and Cher joined the ranks of other distinctive and equally tumultuous power couples like Ike and Tina Turner or Johnny Cash and June Carter.

In Cher: The Memoir, pt. 1, the singer revealed an especially harrowing moment in her marriage to Bono. The year was 1972, and she and Bono were working together in Las Vegas. Desperately unhappy and seeing no other option out of her circumstances, Cher stepped onto her Las Vegas hotel balcony and began to think.

“I was dizzy with loneliness,” Cher wrote. “I saw how easy it would be to step over the edge and simply disappear. For a few crazy minutes, I couldn’t imagine any other option. I did this five or six times.” The singer said that the idea of her mother, sister, or son, Chaz, having to reconcile with her suicide kept her from stepping over the balcony railing.

At the height of her fame in the early 1970s, Cher also acknowledged that her fans were on her mind. “Things like this could make people who look up to me feel that it’s a viable solution,” the singer wrote. Thus, she came across a different kind of revelation. “I don’t have to jump off. I can just leave him” (via People).

Turning A Toxic Relationship Into An Enduring Career

Even without the troublesome detail that Cher was still a child when she began living and working with Sonny Bono, the couple’s dynamics got no less toxic further into their marriage. Bono frequently controlled Cher’s actions, relationships, and appearance while simultaneously cheating on her. Despite the harrowing moment a 26-year-old Cher had on the balcony of her Las Vegas hotel room, she opted to save herself—physically and emotionally—by divorcing Bono in 1975.

After their divorce, Sonny and Cher remained professional colleagues, reuniting for The Sonny & Cher Show from 1976 to 1977. As Cher told People in 2023, “Working together was the easiest part of it because we really made each other laugh. You can’t fake that kind of stuff.” The singer said that when she and Bono were on set, all their interpersonal drama melted away until the work was over.

Sonny Bono died in a skiing accident in 1998, after which Cher released her iconic album Believe, dedicated to Bono.

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images