Smokey Robinson Reveals 1960’s Affair With Diana Ross
Smokey Robinson revealed he and Diana Ross had a year-long affair in the 1960's. Robinson, who was publicizing his new album, titled Gasms, spoke about the affair to The Root, explaining, “I was married at the time. We were working together and it just happened. But it was beautiful. She’s a beautiful lady, and I love her right 'til today. She’s one of my closest people. 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.”
Robinson, who married to his Miracles group-mate Claudette from 1959 to 1986, went on to say that the affair with Ross was painful because he was in love with the both of them at the same time: “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.”
Smokey Robinson told us that when looking back to his early Motown days, he had no idea his music would have such an enduring impact: “It always flabbergasts me, man, because, see, when you're living it, you're not conscious of the fact that this is what you're doing. You're not thinking about, 'OK, this is what I'm doing.' You're doing it for the moment. You're doing it, 'Well, hey, I'm trying to write this song right now.' But when I sat there and I look back on the history of that and the songs and the so on and so forth, it's always overwhelming to a certain degree, man.”
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