Smokey Robinson allegedly had a one-year affair with Diana Ross while he was married to his first wife, Claudette Rogers.
“I was married back then. [Ross and I] They were working together and it was. But it was beautiful,” Robinson explained to The Guardian on Thursday.
“She is a beautiful lady and I love her to this day. She is one of my closest friends. He was young and trying to put his career together,” she explained.
The legendary singer claimed she was “trying to help” Ross get into the scene at the time, but said, “I wasn’t going after him and he wasn’t coming after me either.”
However, the couple eventually ended their alleged love out of guilt.
“After talking for a while, Diana told me she couldn’t do that because she knew Claudette and knew I still loved my wife,” he said. “And I did. I loved my wife very much.”
It’s unclear when the couple’s supposed relationship began, but Robinson was married to Rogers from 1959 to 1986.
A representative of Ross did not immediately respond to Page Six’s requests for comment.
Although her relationships with both Ross and Rodgers eventually failed, Robinson said it gave her a new perspective on love.
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“I learned that we can love more than one person at a time. And it has been tabooed by us. By people,” he explained.
“It’s not because a person isn’t worthy or isn’t living the way you expect them to – it has to do with emotions. If we could control love, no one would love anyone. No one would take that risk. Why would you put your heart in so that someone could hurt you like that and have these feelings?
In 2002, the “Cruisin’” singer married his second wife, Frances Glandney.
Meanwhile, the 79-year-old “Chain Reaction” singer married Robert Ellis Silberstein in 1971, but the couple split six years later. Soon after, she married Arne Naess Jr in 1985 and they have been married for 15 years.