Rock icon Rod Stewart got the archival treatment today from BBC Two, for a show featuring performances of his biggest hits from over the years.
During his eight decades on this Earth – happy birthday, Roderick – the Highgate-born pop star has married three times.
His first marriage was to Alana Collins, way back in 1979. But he’s still (nearly) as relevant today as he ever was.
Sir Rod shared a tribute to music producer Richard Perry following his death on Christmas Eve, and received support from his wife Penny Lancaster for his high profile critique of Gregg Wallace.
Rod Stewart’s first marriage was to American actress Alana Collins
Born in the final year of the Second World War, Alana Hamilton Stewart – Alana Collins – is an American actress and former model.
She grew up in Nacogdoches, Texas, and Houston, but moved to New York to find modelling work.
She and Rod Stewart married in 1979, and have two children together, Kimberly (1979) and Sean (1980). They divorced in 1984, but Alana kept his surname – and, one hopes, the Steinway piano she received from Elton John as a gift during the relationship.
A 1995 People magazine feature quotes Alana as saying, years after their separation, that she “was certain he was faithful” – at the time.
“But I was stupid,” she clarified. “Just plain unconscious. I had a very rude awakening.”
When they divorced, Rod admitted he was “madly in love” with a model by the name of Kelly Emberg, whom he’d seen in a fashion docudrama.
The collapse of his marriage to Alana, he claimed, “had nothing to do with any other woman. The idea that I was always cheating on my wife while we were together is rubbish.”
His own autobiography, however, appears to dispute this account.
An inauspicious first meeting with Kelly Emberg, and cheating on her… twice
Rod Stewart’s introduction to Kelly Emberg came by way of a documentary called Portfolio, about a number of models working for the Elite agency.
It was 1983, and he’d been married to Alana for three or four years.
“As moments in movie history go, it wasn’t exactly Citizen Kane,” he wrote in his 2012 autobiography, as quoted in MailOnline. “But a face on the screen took my breath away. I decided I had to meet her.”
His representatives lied to Kelly’s representatives, telling them he’d written a song for her. This got them into a restaurant together, a “steak house with blood-red leather booths”.
By 1986, they were going solid, and Rod bought them a 19th-century English manor north of London, with “rolling lawns, and a lake, and a paddock for horses”.
Regardless, in his own words, he ended up “floating off and fooling around with another woman”. Who? Actress Kelly LeBrock.
Later, when Kelly Emberg – the first Kelly – was eight months pregnant with their child, she found out about another of his affairs.
How? Because the model, whom Rod doesn’t name in his book, knocked on the door of their shared home, saying she was “obviously giving him something you’re not”.
Rod Stewart writes in his autobiography that he was “hell-bent on becoming the Last of the Great Philanderers”.
Some people go into philanthropy. Others go into philandering…
The shame of what he did to Kelly still “haunts” him, he writes. But they managed to get through it – for a while, at least.
Rod and Kelly were together for a total of seven years, and had one child together: Ruby (1987).
Inside Rod Stewart’s second marriage, to New Zealander Rachel Hunter
Rod first saw the face of New Zealand model and actress Rachel Hunter in a TV ad. Then, he found himself in an LA nightclub with her, and decided – sensing a pattern? – he had to meet her.
Born in 1969, Rachel is 25 years Rod’s junior. She hails from Auckland, and began her modelling career in France, Australia and New Zealand.
She was 21 when she met Rod Stewart. They married three months later at the Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church in Beverly Hills, California.
During their relationship, which ended in 1999, she gave birth to two children, Renee Cecili Stewart (1992) and Liam McAlister Stewart (1994).
They finalised their divorce in 2006. In the interim period – from 1999 to 2006 – Rod dated Penny Lancaster, whom he married in 2007.
Rod Stewart denies claims he and his third wife Penny Lancaster are at ‘stalemate’
Rod married his third wife, fitness trainer Penny Lancaster, in June 2007, in a small town near the Italian Riviera resort of Portofino.
They exchanged vows in a cloistered medieval abbey, with a hundred or so guests present.
He reportedly gave her a “huge white diamond ring,” People writes. They then celebrated on a yacht decorated with red balloons.
Before marrying, Penny gave birth to her and Rod’s first child, Alastair Wallace Stewart (2005). In 2011, they had another, Aiden Patrick Stewart.
That accounts for all but one of Rod’s eight children. His first was with Susannah Boffey.
Born Sarah Streeter in 1963, Rod’s first daughter was raised by her adoptive parents, Gerald and Evelyn Thubron.
In case you missed Rod Stewart At The BBC, find it on iPlayer here.
Read more: Penny Lancaster on ‘outrageous’ menopausal outburst that left Rod Stewart ‘shocked’
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