They Divorced — Then Went Back on Television Together and Pretended to Be Married

How it began

Sonny Bono and Cher had a number one record in 1965, a television series in 1971 and a divorce in 1975. What is genuinely unusual is the order of the last two: the divorce came in the middle of the professional relationship, not at the end of it, and the two of them went back to work in front of a studio audience afterwards, playing a version of a married couple that no longer existed off camera.

Both of them addressed it publicly at the time. Neither pretended the marriage was intact. The show simply carried on using the same format — the sardonic wife, the put-upon husband — while the audience knew perfectly well what had happened. It ran for another season and a half.

Dates and documents

1. 1964

   Sonny Bono and Cher hold a ceremony in Tijuana; they are legally married in 1969, after their daughter is born.

2. August 1965

   'I Got You Babe' reaches number one in the United States and the United Kingdom.

3. 1 August 1971

   The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour premieres on CBS. It becomes one of the network's biggest variety hits.

4. February 1974

   Cher files for legal separation. The variety series ends in May.

5. 26 June 1975

   The divorce is finalised.

6. 30 June 1975

   Cher marries the musician Gregg Allman, four days later. She files for divorce nine days after that; the couple later reconcile and separate again, divorcing in 1979.

7. February 1976

   The Sonny & Cher Show — a new CBS variety series co-hosted by the divorced couple — premieres. It runs until August 1977.

8. 1988

   Cher wins the Academy Award for Best Actress for Moonstruck.

9. 1988–1995

   Sonny Bono is elected mayor of Palm Springs, then to the United States House of Representatives for California's 44th district.

10. 5 January 1998

    Sonny Bono dies in a skiing accident at Heavenly Ski Resort, aged 62. Cher delivers a eulogy at his funeral.

What can be verified

• PUBLIC RECORD: the divorce was finalised on 26 June 1975; Cher married Gregg Allman four days later.
• PUBLIC RECORD: The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour ran on CBS from 1971 to 1974; the successor series, made after the divorce, ran from 1976 to 1977.
• PUBLIC RECORD: Sonny Bono was elected mayor of Palm Springs in 1988 and to Congress in 1994, taking his seat in 1995.
• PUBLIC RECORD: Bono died in a skiing accident on 5 January 1998; Cher spoke at the funeral.
• CONFIRMED: Cher has said in interviews across five decades that the professional partnership was, financially and creatively, structured in his favour — an account she gave while he was alive and did not revise afterwards.

Why they went back

The commercial explanation is straightforward and documented in the trade press of the period: both of their solo variety shows, launched separately in 1974 and 1975, underperformed. The format worked with two people in it and did not work with one. CBS wanted the pairing back, and the pairing needed the network.

What the revival could not reproduce was the premise. The comedy depended on a marriage the audience believed in, and by 1976 nobody did. The show was cancelled in 1977 and the two never worked together regularly again, though they performed 'I Got You Babe' once more on late-night television in 1987 — an appearance both of them described afterwards as unplanned.

In their own words

“He was the most unforgettable character I've ever met.”

Continue reading · What happened next?She Left With 36 Cents and a Petrol Card. The Only Thing She Asked For Was Her Name.Tina Turner walked out of a Dallas hotel on 1 July 1976 hours before a show. In the divorce she gave up the royalties, the houses and the recording contracts, and kept the two words she performed under.

Bono's public position, set out in his 1991 memoir, was that he had built the act and that Cher had outgrown it. Cher's has been that she was a teenager when the partnership was formed and had no control over its terms. Both accounts can be true; neither has been contradicted by the other's documented statements.

Afterwards

Cher's career after the divorce is the more expansive of the two: a Best Actress Oscar in 1988, a global number one single in 1998 with 'Believe', a Kennedy Center Honor in 2018 and stadium tours into her seventies. Bono left performing for politics, served in Congress, and gave his name to the copyright term extension act passed in the year of his death.

The reason both of them still turn up in the same photograph is the show — 174 episodes of it — and the fact that they kept making it after the marriage that justified it had ended. It is a genuinely odd professional arrangement, and the CBS schedule proves it happened.

The act was always a business arrangement

Sonny Bono had worked at Specialty Records and for Phil Spector before the duo existed; Cher was sixteen when they met and had sung backing vocals on Spector sessions, including 'Be My Baby'. The act was his construction: he wrote the songs, produced the records and shaped the persona. Cher has said consistently that she signed what she was given, because she was a teenager and did not know she could do otherwise.

The company that held the act's earnings, Cher Enterprises, was structured so that Bono and their lawyer controlled it and Cher was an employee of it. When she moved to end the marriage in 1974 the resulting litigation was over that structure rather than over the marriage — and it was reported at the time as one of the more unusual entertainment disputes of the decade, because the person whose name was on the company was the person with the least control of it.

Why the second show failed

The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour worked because of a specific comic contract with the audience: she insulted him, he absorbed it, and the marriage underneath the routine made the cruelty safe. Both of their solo shows in 1974 and 1975 tried to keep half of that and neither found an audience — Cher's ran a single season, Bono's barely that.

The 1976 revival restored the format and could not restore the premise. Reviewers at the time said so bluntly, and both principals later agreed. The show was cancelled in August 1977. What is remarkable is not that it failed but that it existed at all: for eighteen months, two divorced people performed a marriage on network television, in front of an audience that knew, and neither of them pretended otherwise off camera.