She really had a hold on him. Smokey Robinson claimed he had a year-long affair with Diana Ross while he was married to his first wife.
The “Tears of a Clown” singer, now 83, reminisced about growing up in working class Detroit alongside fellow future Motown legends like Aretha Franklin and Ross, now 79, who moved into the neighborhood when Robinson was 10 years old.
“It’s beautiful to know we were kids playing together. And these people are some of the most famous people in the world now,” the “You Really Got a Hold on Me” artist told The Guardian in an interview published on Thursday, April 27. “We had such joy. I grew up in the hood, baby. And I mean the hood.”
Recalling the details about their alleged affair, Robinson told the outlet that the two were romantically involved for “about a year.”
“I was married at the time,” he said, referring to his union with his first wife, Claudette Rogers, with whom he shares two out of three of his adult children. “We were working together and it just happened. But it was beautiful. She’s a beautiful lady, and I love her right till today.” The former Supremes singer “is one of my closest people,” Robinson explained. “She was young and trying to get her career together. I was trying to help her. I brought her to Motown, in fact. I wasn’t going after her and she wasn’t going after me. It just happened.”
Their relationship ended when Ross realized she and Robinson shouldn’t hurt Rogers.
“After we’d been seeing each other for a while, Diana said to me she couldn’t do that because she knew Claudette, and she knew I still loved my wife,” the “Cruisin’” artist told The Guardian. “And I did. I loved my wife very much.” In addition to his affair with Ross, Robinson also had a tryst with another woman during his marriage to Rogers, resulting in the birth of his third child, son Trey.
When he looks back on his time with Ross, Robinson — who has been married to his second wife, Frances Gladney, since 2002 — revealed that he gained “wisdom” with age.
“I learned that we are capable of loving more than one person at the same time. And it has been made taboo by us. By people,” he shared. “It’s not because one person isn’t worthy or they don’t live up to what you expect – it has to do with feelings. If we could control love, nobody would love anybody. Nobody would take that chance. Why would you put your heart out there for somebody to be able to hurt you like that and make you able to have those feelings?”
Robinson — who has continued to make sultry music into his 80s, particularly with the release of his latest album, Gasms — still remains close to the “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” singer, and he couldn’t wait to speak to her upon hearing an outlandish rumor involving their relationship to Michael Jackson.
Upon hearing the fan theory that he and Ross are the real parents of the late King of Pop, Robinson laughed. “They say I’m the baby daddy? They say Diana Ross and I had Michael?” he said, cracking up. “Oh my God! I never heard that one, man! That’s pretty good. That’s funny! That’s funny!” As to whether Ross had ever heard the story before, Robinson needed to get her on the phone. “I’m gonna call her and ask her. That’s funny!”
Ross, for her part, has been married twice: first, to Robert Ellis Silberstein from 1971 to 1977, with whom she shares daughter Tracee Ellis Ross and Chudney Ross, and then to Arne Naess, Jr. from 1985 to 2000, with whom she shares sons Ross Arne Naess and Evan Ross. The iconic singer’s eldest child is daughter Rhonda Ross Kendrick, whom she shares with Motown founder Chuck Berry.
