Meet Her Former Spouses Here Hollywood Life

Publish date: 2024-06-29

Yoko Ono, 89, is known for making quite a memorable mark on the world with her music career and peace activism, but she’s also led an interesting personal life. The Japanese artist has been married four times to three men, including former Beatles member John Lennon, over the course of her life, and has surely had many memorable experiences along the way. She’s also the mother of two children and reportedly dated artist Sam Havadtoy for several decades after John’s death in 1980.

Find out more about Yoko’s previous husbands and marriages below.

Toshi Ichuyanagi

Toshi Ichuyanagi was Yoko’s first husband. She and the successful pianist first met after he moved to New York from Japan in the 1950s to study at the Julliard School. Yoko was also interested in music and at one point studied at nearby Sarah Lawrence College. They became romantically involved and eloped in 1956, starting a life filled with experimental art and music, together. They would sometimes host performances full of music, dance, and poetry, at their loft in TriBeCa. Their marriage lasted until 1962, when they went their separate ways and got a divorce.

Anthony Cox

Yoko went on to marry Anthony Cox, a film producer and art promoter, in 1962, the same year she divorced Toshi. They first met in 1961, after Anthony saw Yoko’s artwork in an anthology and located her in Tokyo, Japan. The two sparked a romance and got married in 1962, but the marriage had to be annulled the following year after Yoko didn’t successfully finalize her divorce from her first husband, Toshi, beforehand. They remarried in June 1963 and went on to welcome their daughter, Kyoko Chan Cox, in Aug. of that same year.

Anthony eventually became Kyoko’s full-time caregiver when Yoko continued to pursue her art, which led to an estrangement between them. Their breakup, which happened in 1966, led Yoko to create her artwork called Half-A-Room and Ceiling Painting/Yes Painting. It was also around this time that she met her future husband John Lennon. Yoko and Anthony officially divorced in Feb. 1969.

John Lennon

Yoko met John at an art show at Indica Gallery in London, England in 1966. Yoko was preparing her art exhibit and was first introduced to the singer by gallery owner John Dunbar. Although John was married to Cynthia Powell at the time, he and Yoko started getting to know each other. He later publicly revealed that in May 1968, when Cynthia was away, he and his future wife worked on music together and eventually “made love at dawn.” Cynthia found out about the affair and filed for divorce from John. It was finalized in 1968.

Around the same time as John and Cynthia’s divorce, Yoko got pregnant by the “Imagine” crooner but sadly suffered a miscarriage in Nov. 1968. Yoko and John went on to continue a serious relationship with each other and as peace activists, they would take part in activities they were passionate about together. One of them included protesting the Vietnam War in 1968. They were married in Gibraltar in 1969 and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam. It was there that they campaigned with a week-long Bed-in for peace.

Yoko and John also recorded a lot of music together, including the album, Two Virgins, which consisted of the music they made the night they first slept together, and the song “Give Peace a Chance.” John added Ono as a middle name in 1969 and the couple moved from England to New York in the early 1970s. John’s band, the Beatles, split up in 1970 and many fans and critics blamed Yoko for it, since it was reported that John had spent more time with her and less with the band.

In Oct. 1975, Yoko and John welcomed their son, Sean Lennon, to the world. John also had a son, Julian Lennon, from his previous marriage with Cynthia. After Sean’s birth, John took a five-year hiatus from music and returned in 1980 with the release of his collaboration with Yoko, Double Fantasy. Three weeks after the album’s release, John was shockingly murdered by a Beatles fan when he was going inside his New York apartment. He was survived by Yoko, Julian, and Sean, and Yoko never remarried.

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