Michael Jackson & Debbie Rowe: Their Untold Love Story
Debbie Rowe, the dermatology assistant best known for her short-lived marriage to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. A union most notable for the birth of his first two children, as well as accelerating paparazzi and tabloid interrogation into every intimate detail of Michael Jackson’s personal life and relationships. At the time, widespread opinion of their surprise wedding was that it was a publicity stunt and a marriage of convenience, only adding to a whirlwind of cynicism and speculation that already haunted Michael Jackson’s public image during the 1990s.
But with hindsight, what can be declared as fact or fiction? Was Debbie in it purely for the fame and money? Was Jackson orchestrating a thinly veiled PR move gone wrong? Or were the two long-time companions grossly misrepresented and genuinely shared mutual affections and heartfelt intentions?
Michael Jackson and Debbie Rowe first met in 1986, while Rowe was working as an assistant for Jackson’s dermatologist Doctor Arnold Klein. As Michael had recently been diagnosed with lupus and vitiligo, Rowe helped treat him for his multiple skin conditions. The 27-year-old blond supported Jackson, providing answers concerning his medical conditions and as a result the pair became good friends. The pop star frequently sent autographed merchandise to the young medical assistant, who proudly hung them on the walls of her office. According to her friend Tanya Boyd, Rowe would obsess over Jackson. She would say, “If people knew him like I knew him, they would not think he was strange. He’s unique and kinky actually.”
The Jackson–Rowe friendship would last for several years, during which, Rowe divorced Richard Edelman, a teacher at Hollywood High School and a man she claimed to have felt trapped by. Rowe and Jackson would often talk to each other about their bad luck in love and unhappy marriages; hers with Edelman, and then years later Jackson’s with Lisa Marie Presley. Like Michael Jackson’s first wife, Rowe supported the entertainer when he was accused of child sexual abuse in 1993 and once married, Jackson kept his friendship with Rowe a secret from his new wife. However, Presley eventually found out but thought nothing of it as she felt Rowe was in no way her husband’s type because of her plain appearance and unglamorous attire.
However, tensions grew between Michael and Lisa Marie as she became increasingly unsure of their relationship and avoided at all costs a potential child custody battle with Jackson by putting off getting pregnant with the child Jackson so desperately craved for. While speaking on the phone together, Debbie Rowe’s response to Michael’s upset at the possibility that he might never become a father was to, on numerous occasions, offer to birth the pop singer a child of his own. An offer Presley soon became all too aware of as Jackson continued to pile on the pressure, ultimately resulting in their separation. In an interview with Playboy, Lisa Marie said that she knew while married to Jackson, that Rowe wanted to have his children and that Rowe had “a crush on him”. Shortly after the public were informed of Jackson and Presley’s break up in early 1996, Rowe became pregnant but suffered a miscarriage in that March. The event devastated Rowe, who feared she would never be able to have a baby. Jackson comforted and consoled Rowe throughout the ordeal, which remained hidden from the media and public.
In September 1996, Michael Jackson embarked on the first leg of his HIStory World Tour. Several months after his divorce from Presley and one month into the tour, Jackson’s personal life made headlines as it was revealed that Rowe was pregnant with his child. One British tabloid newspaper, the News of the World, told the story under the headline “I’m Having Michael’s Baby”. Rowe reacted furiously to the publication, labelling the editorial staff “bastards” and complained that they reported the story as if she and Jackson were “freaks”. However, it was later revealed to have been pretty accurate, detailing that Jackson was the father of the baby, and that he would be raising the child alone. The article also stated that Rowe was artificially impregnated with sperm cells, a “foolproof” method of insemination. In recent years Rowe has stated that she never had sex with Jackson and their children were conceived in a medical office. “They impregnated me. It’s just like I impregnate my mares for breeding. It was very technical… I was his thoroughbred.” Rowe said.
Further reports alleged that the relationship was an “economic” one; that Rowe was in it for financial compensation, and that Jackson agreed in order to have his own child. Upon hearing these assumptions, Michael Jackson made statements condemning the accusation that they have an economic relationship and used artificial insemination as “completely false and irresponsible”. Despite his denials, it has since been revealed that Rowe did in fact receive millions of dollars from Jackson as “gifts” over the years. Among court papers filed against Jackson in 2002 by business manager Myung Ho Lee, a monthly budget for Jackson was detailed and included a $1.5 million payment to Rowe. As Jackson and Rowe never lived together, the King of Pop also bought his long-time friend a $1.3 million home in 1997.
However, when news of the pregnancy broke to Jackson’s mother, Katherine, the family matriarch was horrified and urged her son to wed the mother of his unborn child. Deeply religious, Katherine was pained to think that her son was emulating his father, who had produced an illegitimate child with a woman during their marriage. As a result, Katherine spoke on the telephone to Debbie about the sanctity of marriage and the Jehovah’s Witness faith. She then later spoke to Michael, telling him to marry “that nice girl, Debbie” and “give your child a name, not like your poor, half-sister, Joh’Vonnie”. His mother’s words resonated with the entertainer, who was sickened by the comparison and was strongly against repeating his father’s sins.
Prior to Katherine’s involvement, the view had been for Rowe to act as a surrogate mother; she would give the baby to Jackson as a friendly favour, and he would raise it. But now, spurred on by Katherine and paranoid of receiving any kind of backlash for having a child out of wedlock, Jackson called Rowe and asked her to meet him in Australia. Once there, the entertainer announced his plans for them to wed the next day. On November 13th, 1996, Michael Jackson and Debbie Rowe wed at the Sheraton on the Park Hotel in Sydney, Australia. The night before the wedding, Jackson called Presley, who gave him and Rowe her blessing. In front of 15 friends, the pair exchanged vows at the hotel and Jackson’s 8-year-old nephew, Anthony, served as best man during the ceremony.
The press and public reaction to the marriage was overwhelmingly negative and cynical. Several commentators believed Jackson was marrying a person he did not love and speculated that Rowe was having a baby which wasn’t biologically Jackson’s. The Daily Mirror, a British tabloid newspaper, published a photograph of Rowe on the balcony of an Australian hotel. In it, she is seen holding her head in her hands with a headline proclaiming, “Oh, God! I’ve Just Married Michael Jackson.” However, Rowe’s dismayed, and exasperated pose was most probably due to the excessive presence of paparazzi below. To counteract negative press attention over their marriage, Michael Jackson made the statement “Debbie and I love each other for all the things you’ll never see on stage or in pictures… I fell for the beautiful, unpretentious, giving person that she is, and she fell for me just being me.”
Jackson and Rowe’s first child together, Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., was born on February 13th, 1997, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The baby was nicknamed after Michael’s grandfather and great-grandfather, who were both called Prince. After Rowe and Jackson cut the baby’s umbilical cord together, Prince was taken to intensive care, where he spent five hours with only minor breathing problems. He was subsequently taken by his father to Neverland Ranch, while the baby’s mother recuperated at a friend’s house upon her release from the hospital.
Six weeks later, Rowe saw her son for the first time since his birth having agreed to posing for photographs with Jackson and their newborn son at a hotel. Rowe was cautious about becoming too attached to Prince, as she felt it would make her situation harder to deal with.
Upon arriving, Rowe was ushered into the hotel room, where she was given the infant to hold and told to smile for the camera with Michael. After the shots were taken, she was quickly sent on her way. At Neverland, Prince was cared for by a team of six nannies and six nurses during his first few months. According to one nanny who worked at the Californian ranch, Prince’s mother was not a significant presence in the child’s early life. “I saw her maybe three times and she seemed very sullen.”
However, despite Rowe’s awkwardly distant role, it was announced that the married couple were again pregnant with their second child in November 1997. The baby was to be a girl and already named Paris, after the French city in which her parents said she was conceived.
However, during Rowe’s second pregnancy rumours broke that Michael and Lisa Marie had rekindled their relationship, as they were photographed together numerous times in South Africa, London, and Los Angeles. The divorced couple’s public affection for each other ignited rumours that Michael Jackson was openly having an affair with Presley while still married to Rowe, and that the former couple were planning to get remarried in Johannesburg, South Africa despite the singer already having a wife who was pregnant with his child. The awkward love triangle played out on television, when Debbie publicly denied feeling threatened by the ‘friendship’ and that she had no reason to believe Jackson wasn’t remaining faithful to her.
However, later in the interview she stated that their friendship was the most important thing to her and if marriage would get in the way of that then they’ll put the marriage to aside, but she wanted to remain as friends.
Despite this public turmoil, on April 3, 1998, a healthy blue-eyed Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson was born. Jackson later claimed that he was so anxious following the birth of his daughter, that he “snatched” her and ran straight home “with all the placenta and everything all over her”. However, Rowe later confirmed that Jackson had the placenta frozen. Following the birth, Jackson’s associates contacted Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in Rome, in the hope that the Pontiff would personally baptize the pop star’s daughter. An official for the Pope informed Jackson by letter that the leader of the Catholic Church would not participate in what may be perceived as a publicity stunt.
After the birth of Paris, a pregnancy that was littered with problems and left her unable to have any more children, Rowe became increasingly unsatisfied with their arrangement and asked Jackson for a divorce, which he granted on October 8, 1999. As a result, Rowe received around
$10 million as a divorce settlement and gave Jackson full custody rights to her children. At the time, both Rowe and Jackson requested privacy and asked the public not to speculate on the reasons for their divorce, citing mounting media speculation and press intrusion as a primary
factor for their marriage breakdown. They concluded that despite coming to the end of married life, they would continue to remain friends.
In a 2003 television documentary, The Michael Jackson Interview: The Footage You Were Never Meant to See, a rebuttal video to the Martin Bashir interview Living with Michael Jackson, Rowe attempted to explain her relationship with Jackson and their two children:
“My kids don’t call me Mom because I don’t want them to. They’re Michael’s children. It’s not that they are not my children, but I had them because I wanted him to be a father. People make remarks, ‘I can’t believe she left her children.’ Left them? I left my children? I did not leave my children. My children are with their father, where they are supposed to be”.
However, in 2004 Rowe legally applied for temporary custody of her two children or at least rights for visitation during Michael Jackson’s much publicised legal drama when he was accused again of child molestation. A trial she testified at for the prosecution, a damaging blow to prosecutors as she described how she had tried to protect him from the mother of his teenage accuser. Debbie Rowe also portrayed Jackson as an innocent victim of the “opportunistic vultures” running his affairs. That the singer was “easily manipulated, especially if he was scared”, his former wife said tearfully “there are different Michaels. There’s my Michael and then there is the Michael that everyone else sees.”
When Rowe’s tearful testimony damaged the prosecution in Jackson’s trial, some observers suggested the King of Pop would reward her with generous visitation with the kids she legally gave up to him in their divorce. A judge later ruled Rowe’s surrender of parental rights was invalid due to “procedural” errors and she got a second chance at the bargaining table. But after months of legal wrangling, Rowe didn’t even score a regular schedule of visits with the children she wept for on the witness stand. Instead, Rowe was at the mercy of Jackson, who was now living at least part-time in Bahrain, and his nanny to arrange visits when she asked for them. “There is no specific number of times that she can see them. It’s by request, on a case-by-case basis,” said the source familiar with the visitation order. Although Jackson smiled and batted his eyes at Rowe in court, he showed little interest in rekindling their friendship, a source close to the situation said. “A phone call to say ‘thanks’ would have been nice. It didn’t happen. He truly does not want her in his life.”
Following the singer’s death in 2009, his mother Katherine was made the permanent guardian of Prince, Paris, and their half-brother ‘Blanket’. In addition, a new custody arrangement was made with Rowe, who now had visitation rights with her two children, but would receive no money beyond the spousal agreement already in place reportedly worth $8.5 million. A statement said the “timing, frequency and manner” of Rowe’s visits would be determined after consultation with a child psychologist. Despite Debbie Rowe’s attempt to remain in her biological children’s lives, Paris Jackson told Rolling Stone in 2017, “when I was really really young, my mom didn’t exist.” After realising she must have a mother, she asked her brother Prince and father about the truth. She continued: “‘And he’s like, ‘Yeah.’ And I was like, ‘What’s her name?’ And he’s just like, ‘Debbie.’ And I was like, ‘OK, well, I know the name.’”
After her father’s sudden death, Paris started researching her mother and finally met her again when she was 13 years old. While it is not clear how close of a connection they maintained during the years which followed, Paris was part of her mother’s life when, in 2016, Debbie was diagnosed with breast cancer. Speaking on Entertainment Tonight about her diagnosis, Debbie spoke of her bond with Paris, she said: “She is my rock. She is amazing. She has been with me the whole time” Later, both Paris and Prince gave updates during their mother’s chemotherapy, which ended in January 2017.
However, in a 2017 interview, Prince said little about his relationship with Debbie, saying Paris ‘needed a mother figure,’ hence her decision to find her after Michael’s death. Paris said: “I’ve had a lot of mother figures but by the time my mom came into my life, it wasn’t a ‘mommy’ thing. It’s more of an adult relationship. We’re both very stubborn.” Then in 2018, it was reported Paris cut ties with her mother and moved to a commune in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles. However, in 2019 images were released of the pair sharing a maternal embrace at Paris’s concert with her then-boyfriend Gabriel Glenn, whom Debbie said she had met and approved of. Today, it is unclear if they have remained in touch, as they have not been seen together since and both rarely do interviews or speak of their private life publicly.