Keith Richards’ Love Life: From Boho Romance With Anita Pallenberg to 41 Years With Patti Hansen
The Rolling Stones guitarist may be known for his wild ways, but he knows how to make a relationship last
Keith Richards will forever be the king of rock-star debauchery, and at 81, the Rolling Stones guitarist is a living legend. While Richards was notorious for his drug use in the ’60s and ’70s and embodied the bohemian bad boy, his love life wasn’t quite as wild as Mick Jagger’s.
Richards’ primary vice may have been drugs when Jagger’s was sex, but his two primary relationships with Anita Pallenberg and Patti Hansen are no less fascinating than the Stones frontman’s many flings—and we love that he has one of the longest marriages in music. Read on for a deep dive into his love life.
Keith Richards & Anita Pallenberg: The couple that defined ’60s and ’70s cool
Keith Richards began dating model and actress Anita Pallenberg in 1967. Pallenberg was originally in a relationship with his bandmate Brian Jones, and Richards recalled that, “The first time I saw Anita my obvious reaction was ‘What the f–k is a chick like that doing with Brian?’ Anita’s incredibly strong, a much stronger personality than Brian, more confident, with no reservations, whereas Brian was full of doubts.”
Jones was deeply troubled, dying at just 27 in 1969 following years of drug use. He became increasingly abusive toward Pallenberg, and she left him for Richards. Richards and Pallenberg’s relationship was no fling, though she did have an affair with Jagger during the filming of the experimental 1970 movie Performance, causing some inter-band tension. As Richards wrote in his memoir, it was “not the first time that we’d been in competition for a bird. It was like two alphas fighting,” and he had his own dalliance with Jagger’s muse, Marianne Faithfull.
Richards and Pallenberg never married, but they had three children and stayed together until 1980. Richards’ first son, Marlon Leon Sundeep, who now works in the arts and executive produced a 2023 documentary about his mom, was born in 1969. Pallenberg gave birth to their daughter, Dandelion Angela, who goes by her middle name and stays out of the spotlight, in 1972. Tragedy struck in 1976, when their son Tara Jo Jo Gunne was born, as he died at two months old due to sudden infant death syndrome.
Enduring this trauma strained Richards and Pallenberg’s relationship, and tensions had already been on the rise due to their prodigious drug use and Pallenberg’s affairs. Things got even more dramatic when Scott Cantrell, a 17-year-old who was having an affair with Pallenberg and working on the grounds of the couple’s home, shot himself in the head with Richards’ gun while he was recording in Paris in 1979. Pallenberg was arrested, but the death was ultimately ruled a suicide, and unsurprisingly, the couple broke up shortly thereafter in 1980.
Richards and Pallenberg’s relationship represented the height of ’60s and ’70s excess, and few couples have ever looked cooler than they did. Pallenberg was a major influence on Richards, and he admitted, “Basically, I was trying to keep up with her most of the time and most of the time it was fun.” Many of the Rolling Stones’ most famous songs were inspired by her, and as Richards put it, “I was bursting in love. Anita is in a lot of those songs. She’s a muse, I’m sure.”
In 1981, after their breakup, Richards told Rolling Stone, “Anita is a great, great woman. She’s a fantastic person. I love her. I can’t live with her, you know?” Pallenberg passed away at 75 in 2017, but her legacy lives on in Richards’ swagger and songs.
Keith Richards & Patti Hansen: The rock star/model marriage that’s lasted 40+ years
In 1979, Richards met model Patti Hansen at Studio 54. You might think that a rock star and a model meeting at a famous disco club would lead to a mere hookup rather than lasting love, but you’d be wrong: They quickly fell for one another, and married on Richards’ 40th birthday in 1983, and they’re still together to this day.
Shortly after meeting Hansen, Richards wrote in his diary, “Incredibly I’ve found a woman. A miracle! She is the most beautiful . . . specimen in the WORLD. But that ain’t it! It certainly helps but it’s her mind, her joy of life, and she thinks this battered junkie is the guy she loves.”
Richards and Hansen have two daughters, Theodora, born in 1985, and Alexandra, born in 1986. Both of them are now models, DJs and all-around It Girls. Theodora and Alexandra have both shared lovely words about how much they respect their famous parents’ long marriage. Theodora has said, “I really am super blessed. My parents, they stayed together and I love their love,” and Alexandra shared, “They’re just like a bunch of kids. Their love grows daily, like they just met yesterday. They’re really adorable.”
Hansen has said that the key to her longevity with Richards comes from the way they relate to one another on a down-to-earth level. As she told Vogue, “Any marriage, Rolling Stone or not, there’s definitely going to be some rocky mountains there. We have had our trials; that’s for sure. But on the whole, it’s great. We both have the same morals and background. We both come from working-class families. I think we are very similar in many ways.”
In a 2023 Howard Stern interview, Richards said he’s “always” been in love with Hansen and gushed, “Patti is the whole deal. By now, I wouldn’t know how to get out of bed without her. Or how to get in.” Rock star marriages don’t get sweeter than that, and Richards and Hansen’s romance has clearly defied the odds.
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