Hello, Cher! Snakkle Turns Back Time to Look at the Men in Cher’s Life

These retro photos of the good-looking Cher and Warren Beatty hide their nine year age difference. In the early '60s, before marrying Bono, a young Cher had a brief fling with one of the most notorious womanizers in Hollywood history: Warren Beatty, who is nine years her senior. Interestingly, they both now have transgender children, and Beatty’s son Stephen has blogged about Chaz Bono’s role as a spokesperson for the community.

At age 16, Cher married 27-year-old singer Sonny Bono. Despite their success as recording artists (“I Got You Babe”) and variety-show hosts (The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour), the couple—whose only child, Chaz, was born in 1969—had a tempestuous relationship, and they split after 13 years together. When Sonny Bono died in a skiing accident in 1998, Cher delivered a moving, funny eulogy at his funeral.

When Cher parted ways with Bono, she quickly developed a relationship with music mogul David Geffen. In The Operator, Geffen's biographer Tom King described it as “Geffen’s first fully functional heterosexual relationship.” (Geffen, who is openly gay, now regularly ranks in Out magazine’s list of the 50 most powerful gay men and women.) King also quotes Cher as saying, “I was the first person to share his bed and to share his life. People don’t believe that, or they don’t want to believe it, or they don’t understand how it could be. But we were really crazy about each other.”

Alas, Cher missed her opportunity to be with Elvis. “When he called, I was just too frightened... to go to Las Vegas with him for the weekend,” Cher told Good Morning America. “I regretted it forever.” Interestingly, the other man she mentions she could’ve but didn’t? Marlon Brando. “We just hung out for a while,” Cher told Letterman.

The same year her divorce from Bono became final, Cher married Gregg Allman. The Southern rocker had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and it clearly took its toll on the relationship. “We had some heavy settling-in pains, but I’m sure there have been much stranger relationships,” Allman said in a People magazine interview. Before they parted ways, the couple had a son together, Elijah Blue Allman, and also produced a widely panned album: Two the Hard Way, which they released under the name Allman and Woman. (You have to hear it to believe it.)

Cher enjoyed a kind of domestic bliss with Kiss guitarist Gene Simmons in the early '80s, even being photographed for People magazine working on a needlepoint for her man (no joke). At the time, she called it “the best relationship I’ve ever had with a human being.” For his part, Simmons (who now stars in his own reality show, Gene Simmons Family Jewels) was similarly smitten: “I’m crazy about Cher, nuts about her. She’s my first love. Cher’s an untainted soul who has never done anything bad to anybody.”

In the mid-'80s, Cher enjoyed a number of relationships with younger men, including up-and-comer Val Kilmer, 13 years her junior. Kilmer wouldn’t hit it big for a few more years (his role in Top Gun was three years later; The Doors five years after that). The two met at a birthday party thrown by Meryl Streep. “There was guy talk and girl talk,” Cher said in an interview. “It was just like The Big Chill, only for real.”

She sure has a way of picking 'em—after Kilmer came another hot young Hollywood commodity, Tom Cruise, fresh off the success of Risky Business (and only 23 at the time). Though the relationship didn’t last long, Cher told Oprah Winfrey it might have been a “great big romance, because I was crazy for him.” So what was Cruise like back then? “He was so wonderful,” Cher told Oprah. “He was so different. He was a shy boy.”

For a while, it looked like Cher might have found another potential spouse in producer Joshua Donen—son of legendary director Stanley Donen (Singin’ in the Rain). Cher reportedly liked the fact that he was such a “nonexecutive type for an executive,” according to Mary Anne Cassata’s The Cher Scrapbook. Although Donen wanted to get married (their supposed engagement made it into the papers at the time), they never tied the knot.

Cher took a break from Hollywood hotshots—but not from younger men. She met Brooklyn baker Rob Camilletti when she was 40 and he was 22, and for a while the two had a steady, normal life together. She encouraged him to pursue acting after he starred in her video for “I Found Someone.” But the media spotlight was hard on Camilletti, Cher told Parade. “They were so mean with Robert—you know, ‘the bagel boy.’” Though the two parted ways, they’re still “best friends.”

Younger man and a rock star—Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora was a slam dunk for Cher in the late '80s. (Check out the two of them performing “Heart of Stone” together.) Interviewed recently about his clothing line, WTB White Trash Beautiful, Sambora credited his time with Cher for helping to form his aesthetics: “A turning point for me was when I was about 28 years old and I started dating Cher. Obviously she's a fashionista; she taught me a lot.”

Hunky? You betcha. But despite persistent rumors that biker-turned-mountain-climber Tim Medvetz was Cher’s latest boyfriend (some reports even had them getting married), all the two have ever admitted is being friends. Cher has supported Medvetz’s foundation The Heroes Project, which helps wounded veterans tackle seemingly insurmountable obstacles like scaling mountains (Medvetz starred in Everest: Beyond the Limit, which documented his summit climb after recovering from a near-fatal motorcycle crash in 2001).

On The Tonight Show, Cher told Jay Leno that she’d met comedian Ron Zimmerman through a friend... on Facebook(!). Apparently at first he had no idea who she was because her name was already taken (any guesses as to what the actual Cher’s profile name might be?). Cher said that Zimmerman, who’s 12 years her junior, is nonetheless “the oldest man I’ve ever dated!”