Tina Turner filed for divorce from her husband Ike Turner on July 27, 1976, on the grounds of irreconcilable differences.
The singer made the decision while on tour with Ike in Dallas in 1976, although their divorce was not finalized until 1978. The couple was married for 16 years, and their relationship had been physically, emotionally, and financially abusive throughout.
“Maybe I was brainwashed. I was afraid of him, and I cared what happened to him. And I knew that if I left, there was no one to sing,” Turner said in a 1981 interview with People.
The couple met at one of his concerts in St. Louis in the 1950s. After he heard Tina sing, he asked her to join his band, which he later renamed the Ike & Tina Review. The couple wed in 1962.
Tina Turner’s Tragic Marriage To Ike
Their relationship was unfortunately marred by his violence towards her. In 1981, she admitted she suffered trauma and physical abuse when pregnant. She also revealed that he forced her to go back to work too soon after having their son, Robbie.
“I felt obligated to stay in the marriage and I was afraid,” she told People, via the Independent. “I didn’t want to hurt him, and after he beat me up, I was sitting there all bruised and torn and all of a sudden I’m feeling sorry for him. Maybe I was brainwashed.”
He frequently cheated on Turner. He admitted to the Los Angeles Times in 1993 that he “maybe” regretted his extramarital dalliances. “If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t do anything any different. Except maybe for all the girlfriends,” he said.
Tina Turner opened up further about the horrific abuse in her 2018 memoir, My Love Story. “He used my nose as a punching bag so many times that I could taste blood running down my throat when I sang. He broke my jaw. And I couldn’t remember what it was like not to have a black eye.”
Tina Ran Away Weeks Before Filing For Divorce
Tina ran away from Ike in Dallas, just a few weeks before she filed for divorce. The pair got into an altercation at the airport, and she told People in 1981 that once they reached their hotel, he was beaten so severely that the left side of her face was “swollen like a monster’s.”
During her 2017 appearance on The Jonathan Ross Show, Tina explained how she left her then-husband through a side exit which led to the freeway. She pleaded with a local hotel manager to let her stay the night, despite only having 36 cents and a gas card. “It was just time to not take any more,” she said. “It was constantly abusive. … It was just the sameness sameness, and the violence, and you just get fed up, and you say, ‘Life is not worth living if I’m going to stay in this situation,” she said per, The List.
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Tina lost everything in her divorce from Ike. “He kept everything. He always said, ‘When you leave, you will leave like you came,” she recalled to Jonathan Ross. In her 2021 documentary, she noted the only thing he let her keep was the car and the rights to her stage name.
Their relationship and its aftermath left Tina with PTSD. “My relationship with Ike was doomed the day he figured out I was going to be his moneymaker,” she wrote in My Love Story. “He needed to control me, economically and psychologically, so I could never leave him.”
In the 2021 documentary, despite everything he put her through, Tina had found some forgiveness for Ike. “Forgiving means not to hold on,” she said. “Not forgiving, you suffer, because you think about it over and over. And for what?”
If you or someone you know has been a victim of domestic violence, help is available 24 hours a day through the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233.
