Cher Says “It Wasn’t Love at First Sight… It Was Something” With Sonny Bono
In 1962, Cher and Sonny Bono met for the first time at a Los Angeles coffee shop. In a new interview, Cher compared their meeting to Tony and Maria’s in West Side Story, saying everyone and everything else just faded away. However, it wasn’t love at first sight, at least not for Bono. Cher said in an upcoming CBS Sunday Morning interview that he flat-out told her he didn’t find her attractive and fancied her friend instead! Of course, things changed as the pair became close friends and later got married.
Cher even recalls what Bono was wearing when they first met. Cher, just 16 at the time, said he was wearing a mohair suit, a mustard-colored shirt with a white collar and Beatle boots. Bono was much older, at 27 years old, but Cher admitted that the age difference never felt strange because he acted “kind of childish.”
In 1962, a young Cher met Sonny Bono in a coffee shop. She was captivated, comparing their first meeting to Tony and Maria’s in West Side Story—a moment when everyone else faded away. Anthony Mason sits down with the legendary icon. pic.twitter.com/NiGSQeO5EJ
— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) November 14, 2024
“He liked my girlfriend,” Cher continued. “He said, you know, you can come and stay with me. And I was like, okay, you know. And he went, no, no. I — I don’t find you particularly attractive. So, I was upset and happy at the same time.”
Everett Collection
She said that her childish ways were likely what finally attracted him to her. She recalls one day that they lit a candle and painted watercolors all day long. Other women his age wanted him to settle down and make loads of money, but Cher wasn’t interested in all of that at such a young age.
After marrying in 1969, they had one child together, Chaz Bono, and led their own successful shows The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and The Sonny & Cher Show. They also recorded music together and even continued working together for a while after their split in the mid-’70s. Though they often took jabs at each other after their divorce, when Sonny died in 1998 from a skiing accident, Cher was devastated and wrote a eulogy in hopes to repair the damage and misconceptions about him and read it at his funeral.
The interview will air on Nov. 17 on CBS Sunday Morning at 9am ET.
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Classic Comedy Duos
March 2021
Chuckle at television & films funniest comic duos.
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