Smokey Robinson has opened up about his longtime friendship with Diana Ross and revealed that at one point they were a little more than friends.
In a recent interview with the Guardian the 83-year-old music icon claimed he and Ross had an affair for “about a year” while he was married to his first wife Claudette Rogers.
“I was married at the time. We were working together and it just happened. But it was beautiful.”
The legendary singers have been friends since they were 10 years old, becoming close after Ross and her family moved onto the same street as Robinson and his family.
The two also lived in the same neighborhood as Aretha Franklin.
“It’s beautiful to know we were kids playing together. And these people are some of the most famous people in the world now,” he said. “We had such joy.”
Robinson admitted that as a teen he had a crush on Franklin, but it never amounted to anything more.
However, his relationship with other childhood friend, Diana Ross, developed into something more.
“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.”
Ultimately the affair came to an end.
“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. And I did. I loved my wife very much.”
The Motown legend explained that his affair with Ross helped him understand a subject so many of us struggle to comprehend: love.
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. 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?”
And while Robinson was quick to admit he had an affair with Ross, he was just as quick to deny the rumors that he and Ross were the biological parents of Michael Jackson.
“They say I’m the baby daddy?” he laughed. “Hehehehe! Hooohooho! They say Diana Ross and I had Michael? Oh my God! I never heard that one, man! That’s pretty good. That’s funny! That’s funny!”