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Comment by jimt1234 | Hacker News Reader

One minor fact about Dolly I've always found fascinating is that she was married to the same dude for almost 60 years, until he passed away recently. I mean, being as famous as she was as an entertainer - that just seems like an extreme anomaly.

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Do we have actual data on whether or not celebrities have more volatile relationships?

My gut feeling says they may very well be. But I feel it could also just be the media being bloodthirsty towards celebrity drama skewing our perception of it.

> Do we have actual data on whether or not celebrities have more volatile relationships?

Yes, they are legitimately more volatile [1]

> I find that the overall divorce rate for celebrities during their first 16 years of marriage is 52%, compared to 31% for the UK population as a whole.

>Celebrity first marriages fare worse than subsequent marriages with 57% versus 47% ending in divorce within 16 years, compared to 35% and 28% respectively for UK

[1] https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/celebrity-divorce...

I guess the fact that I'm not mildy surprised that people can be married for 60 years says something about how different our cultures are? Even though we're on HN discussing so many other things we have in common.

Divorce is rampant among celebrities in the USA. Maybe not worldwide?

It's not unheard of. But I guess it's a mix of several small factors:

1. divorce rates have been rising for decades.

2. 60 years is a very long time, and that means Dolly would have had to marry around 18-20. Marrying that young these days for my generation very much is an anomaly, and people are putting off marriage more and more these days.

3. Celebrity culture in particular has a much more tumultuous relationship. In a number of cases, marriage may simply be another influential tool to manage fame and wealth rather than an act of love and caring.

I think money, fame, celebrity status, etc. often creates pressures on the relationship.

Kind of like how it sometimes pushes people into drug addictions. That's a stereotype that we've all heard about since kids, but it wasn't until relatively recently that I thought about it seriously that it occurred to me that a touring celebrity musician's life can be stressful and the drugs can be (or start out as) a pressure valve release. I think that part of it clicked to me when I heard a musician being interviewed about it, I forget which. Maybe it was a Beatle talking about their early amphetamine days.

I had a friend in the mid-90s that was in a mildly successful band. They did a few national tours as opener for bands like The Red Hot Chili Peppers. I met up with him once while he was out on tour. I was thinking he was living his best life, like he was gonna brag about the lifestyle. Just the opposite. He hated touring, said it was very stressful, and that he just wanted to eat a home-cooked meal and sleep in the same bed more than two nights in a row. And yes, he said industry folks were constantly pushing free drugs.

Re the drug addictions - another thing to note about touring musicians is that there's a lot of downtime. New cities every day, not much to do until your show in the evening. Pretty easy to slip into unhealthy habits.

I tend to visit the local museums, drink coffee at a cute coffee place and hit up the town square instead of doing hardcore drugs.

Yeah clearly there are alternatives, and plenty of musicians are able to find them. If you're already an addict though, there's not much stopping you from continuing that lifestyle, other than the ability to secure the next fix.

> but it wasn't until relatively recently that I thought about it seriously that it occurred to me that a touring celebrity musician's life can be stressful and the drugs can be (or start out as) a pressure valve release

The 2017 documentary about Avicii [0] does a great job of showing this specific case. He was an introvert so he started drinking to be more comfortable on stage. As he got more famous, the pressure to create more hit records grew and grew. David Guetta explains it better than I could and he's world famous in his own right.

Highly recommend watching it and consider it MUCH better than the 2024 documentary.

0 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7357302/

Paul Newman I think. Same thing. He was also married to the same person for decades.

Yeah and just like Dolly, someone we need more of.

Her husband was Carl Dean.

I meant to say Paul Newman was similarly married for decades to the same person.

De mortis nil nisi bonum, as they say.

George Benson is probably a better example. Like another commenter points out, though, it might just be bias due to the media reporting more on drama than celebrity wedding anniversaries. But, I must admit, I do often look up biographies of entertainers I like and it is quite unusual for them to have a "normal" romantic life.

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwig married in 1988, and they are both celebrities.

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