Tina Turner is opening up about her second marriage to Erwin Bach in her new memoir, including the fact that he donated a kidney after she suffered total kidney failure.
In “Tina Turner: My Love Story,” the legend, 78, chronicles her second chance at love after a physically abusive relationship with her former husband and musical collaborator, Ike Turne, and how the love from that second marriage has sustained her through numerous health issues in recent years.
“I lived through a hellish marriage that almost destroyed me, but I went on,” she wrote.
Turner and Bach first met in 1985, and finally tied the knot in 2013. He is 16 years her junior.
Turner has survived both a stroke and intestinal cancer with Bach by her side throughout. He even offered up one of his kidneys after she suffered total kidney failure.
She writes that her husband “shocked me by saying that he wanted to give me one of his kidneys.”
“I wondered if anyone would think that Erwin’s living donation was transactional in some way,” she says. “Incredibly, considering how long we had been together, there were still people who wanted to believe that Erwin married me for my money and fame. What else would a younger man want with an older woman? Erwin always ignored the rumors.”
According to People, the April 2017 operation was in many ways a success, though Turner’s body still goes through complications from trying to reject the new organ.
“I know that my medical adventure is far from over,” she writes. “But I’m still here — we’re still here, closer than we ever imagined. I can look back and understand why my karma was the way it was. Good came out of bad. Joy came out of pain. And I have never been so completely happy as I am today.”
Turner encourages people to sign up to donate organs in order to save lives, the Associated Press reports.
