Diana Ross celebrated her birthday yesterday! 🎉 Wishing her the best years to come. 🌟 Inside her eventful love life and the men she was close to.Read The Full Story In The First Comment 👇💬⤵️

Berry Gordy, the Relationship Built Around Her Stardom

Berry Gordy’s relationship with Ross always seemed to carry something bigger than romance alone. There was affection, of course, but there was also ambition, belief, and a shared understanding of what her future was supposed to look like.

In a People retrospective, Gordy explained that he never wanted their personal relationship to interfere with her career.

He put it most clearly when he said, “Diana and I are the same kind of people. She wanted what I wanted.” Gordy added that they had vowed never to let their relationship get in the way of her rise.

“I loved her, but I wasn’t selfish enough to want to marry and take her out of what I knew she had to have. She had to have that stardom up there.”

That says a lot about Ross, and about the kind of presence she had in people’s lives. She was not someone men simply dated. She was someone they often seemed to recognize as extraordinary.

And there’s one more unexpected turn in the singer’s love life that most might not expect, and this one had a very different kind of energy.

Gene Simmons, the Unexpected Rock-and-Roll Detour

If the other chapters feel soulful or bittersweet, the Gene Simmons one lands with a little more surprise. In the Mirror, Simmons said their relationship began after Cher encouraged him to call Ross for help picking out her Christmas gift, and from there, things moved quickly.

He also made it very clear what drew him to Ross. “I loved that she was such a strong woman who was confident in her own skin,” he said. “That’s the most seductive thing.”

Unfortunately, this meant he left Cher for Ross, and Simmons believes that the two iconic singers never spoke again because of this.

These small glimpses into her love life give some insight into why she did not need one more wedding at the end to feel complete. By the time Ross reached this stage of life, she had already experienced several profound loves, and the one she seemed to hold closest never really left her heart.