What’s love got to do with it?
Plenty, when you’re speaking on the life story of the legendary Tina Turner, who passed away on May 24 at the age of 83. We know that she experienced an unhealthy, violent relationship with her first husband, the late Ike Turner. We also know that she has also spoken about not feeling loved by her own mother, Zelma Bullock, though she was able to make peace with her later in life. But one person, aside from her children, who showed the Grammy winner a lasting love that would make all the difference was her husband, German music producer Erwin Bach. They met when he was tasked by her manager with picking her up at the airport in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1985. She said it was love at first sight.
“He was [16 years] younger [than me]. He was 30 years old at the time and had the prettiest face. I mean, you cannot [describe] it,” she recalled in her 2021 HBO documentary, Tina. “It was like insane. [I thought], ‘Where did he come from?’ He was really so good-looking. My heart [was beating fast] and it means that a soul has met, and my hands were shaking.”
Though they only tied the knot in 2013, they were together for almost four decades. During that time, he donated a kidney to her, and they made a new life together in Switzerland (she relinquished her U.S. citizenship and took the oath of Swiss nationality the same year they were married), tying the knot in front of more than 200 guests at their house on the banks of Lake Zurich. She said of the joy she felt marrying Bach that she was in a state of “nirvana.”
“It’s that happiness that people talk about, when you wish for nothing, when you can finally take a deep breath and say, ‘Everything is good,'” she told HELLO! magazine in 2013. “It’s a wonderful place to be.”
He stood by her until her death. She said in her 2020 book, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good, that they worked because he allowed her to fully shine without needing her to dim her light.
“We grant each other freedom and space to be individuals at the same time we are a couple,” she wrote. “Erwin, who is a force of nature in his own right, has never been the least bit intimidated by my career, my talents, or my fame. He shows me that true love doesn’t require the dimming of my light so that he can shine. On the contrary, we are the light of each other’s lives, and we want to shine as bright as we can, together.”
In celebration of their love, and more importantly, her life and legacy, see photos of the lovebirds from over the years, below.
