Superstar Cher has had a life of ups and downs, resulting in fame, money – and two kids.

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Singer, actress, superstar… Cher has had a lot of different roles. But she is also a mother. In the 1970s she had two children, a girl named Chastity and a boy, Elijah Blue. But each has had their issues – and struggled through them – just as Cher herself has. Here’s the story of Cher’s life, loves and kids.

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Described by Forbes magazine as “the most famous chanteuse and performer of our time,” Cher has attained fame and stayed relevant with a chameleon-like ability to move with the times. With a magnetic presence on stage, the “Goddess of Pop” has shown the way for other female stars to mix showmanship with music.

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Since going solo, Cher has shifted 100 million units, on top of the 40 million records that she sold as half of Sonny & Cher. On top of that, she’s received acclaim as an actress for films such as Silkwood, The Witches of Eastwick and Moonstruck, taking down an Oscar for her performance in the last of those. She has a host of other awards, including an Emmy and a Grammy.

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On top of that, Ms. magazine hailed her as an authentic “feminist hero” for the 1980s, saying, “Cher, the straightforward, tattooed, dyslexic single mother, the first Oscar-winner to have entered into matrimony with a known heroin addict and to have admitted to being a fashion victim by choice, has finally landed in an era that’s not afraid to applaud real women.”

Cher’s biographer Mark Bego summed her up. He wrote, “No one in the history of show business has had a career of the magnitude and scope of Cher’s. She has been a teenage pop star, a television hostess, a fashion magazine model, a rock star, a pop singer, a Broadway actress, an Academy Award-winning movie star, a disco sensation, and the subject of a mountain of press coverage.”

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This may all have seemed a long way off when Cher ditched high school at 16 with her heart set on fame and fortune. That was in 1962, when she met a 28-year-old assistant to Phil Spector, the record producer. He was Sonny Bono, and in time she’d come to be very close to him, so close that they unofficially got hitched in Tijuana in the fall of 1964.

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Sonny’s idea was for Cher to become an artist in her own right, but she was too nervous to perform on her own, so he would get up on stage with her and sing harmonies. She was able to focus on Sonny and ignore the nerves. Despite early stutters as a duo, Cher had some success with solo work, particularly a cover of Bob Dylan’s “All I Really Want To Do” and an album of the same name.

But in 1965 it was as a duo that Sonny & Cher would break through, with the recording of “I Got You Babe.” They’d had it suggested that a U.K. audience would be more receptive to their musical style than the U.S., so they headed to London. There, the Hilton hotel did not like their clothing and threw them out, and the ensuing publicity saw them become instant stars.

That clothing created a sensation, with British kids rushing to dress just like Sonny & Cher. This, alongside the massive success of “I Got You Babe,” saw the duo become massively sought-after. Suddenly, the pair were all the rage on TV and in sold-out shows in arenas across America too.

In the mid-1960s Sonny & Cher occupied the stratosphere of pop celebrity. They were the “it” couple of rock music and on the back of their enormous popularity, they sold 40 million records across the globe. But rock took a political turn as the decade came to an end, leaving the pair behind. Worse for them, they had spent all the money.

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On top of that, Sonny had been seeing other women, and the couple had relationship problems to add to their financial woes. But Sonny wanted to work at it, and he told Cher that he wanted a proper marriage and a family. The family came in 1969, when Cher had her first child, who was named Chastity at birth. The wedding, official this time, followed shortly after.

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Chastity’s name derived from Cher’s first role in a movie, in which she starred as a bisexual woman. But Chastity did not use that name exclusively. Sonny once took Chastity to a shop to buy a keyring, but they did not have the name. So Sonny asked his child to choose a name that they did have. From then on, the name “Fred” stuck.

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With their music career stuttering, it was time for some rebranding. Bono had them take on a much more hippie look. It clearly worked, since by 1971 they had their own TV show on CBS. The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour was a hit, and there was space, too, for Chastity, who often featured.

On the show, Sonny took the role of a fool under the feet of Cher’s whip-smart lady. When Sonny met his demise some years later, Cher would say in his eulogy, “He had the confidence to be the butt of the joke, because he created the joke.” However, it was just for show – Sonny retained control.

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Despite the success of the program, the couple’s relations had begun to wear thin. In a 1999 interview with Benjamin Svetkey, Cher described how things were. She said, “He was like the father. You know how you can be frightened of your father even if he doesn’t ever do anything?”

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The diva continued, “It wasn’t like, I mean, he never hit me, never really yelled at me. He could be tough, though. He could just be real tough in that kind of horrible, tough Sicilian way. I couldn’t stand on my own two feet and talk back to him. That was my problem. I could just never ever talk back to him, and so I never got any of my needs met that weren’t what he felt they should be.”

Cher explained how things had changed. She said, “When I was young it didn’t make any difference because I was so crazy about him on so many levels. He was really everything to me, and after I had Chaz I started to grow up and he wouldn’t allow it, and I was starting to really… He was starting to kill my spirit.”

The singer decided that she needed more out of their arrangement. She told Svetkey, “I went to him and said, ‘Look, break the contract. Let us drop a new contract, make it 50-50. You can’t tell me what to do any more. I’m 27 years old. You can just not tell me what to do,’ and he wouldn’t do it, and he just didn’t count on how tough I could be.”

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In the end, Cher decided divorce was the best course, and she applied for a permanent separation in 1974. The reason given was “involuntary servitude.” But the case didn’t run smoothly. Accusations flew about money from the show, and Sonny wanted custody of Chastity. Of course, in the circumstances, the TV show could not continue.

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During the case, Cher had found someone new. She was dating David Geffen, the record label boss. He got involved when Sonny wouldn’t move out of the marital home. While Sonny was off recording one night, Geffen and two goons pitched all his goods into the street, turfing out Sonny’s current girlfriend in the process.

Three days after finalizing the divorce in 1975, Cher got hitched again, this time to Gregg Allman. But barely more than a week later, she was ready to call it off. Allegedly, Cher found that she couldn’t cope with Allman’s reliance on booze and heroin. She would later say, “He was so high he didn’t even understand me.”

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However, Allman would not give up on Cher, so he sobered up and rekindled their marriage. In 1976 Sonny and Cher started their show all over again, which Allman found astonishing enough that this time he wanted to quit the marriage. But when Cher told him that she was pregnant again with Elijah Blue, he decided that he was okay with it. In any case, the show did not do particularly well.

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The couple would make an album of duets, called Two the Hard Way. But neither the critics nor listeners were very keen on the record, and the marriage would not recover. Allman told Entertainment Weekly magazine in 1992, “There was no future for us, because she has that constant paranoia of [my] going back to alcohol.”

After two marriages, Cher had been left with two children. The eldest, Chastity, followed her into music with a band called Ceremony. Chastity also tried out acting; however, it wasn’t a good fit, since he felt uncomfortable with being a woman. However, later years would see the-then Chaz succeed at acting, with parts in soap The Bold and the Beautiful and 2017’s American Horror Story: Cult.

When only 18 Chastity came out as a lesbian. Chastity wrote in his 1998 book about the experience, Family Outing, “As a child, I always felt there was something different about me… When I was 13, I finally found a name for exactly how I was different. I realized I was gay.”

At first Cher wasn’t reconciled to Chastity’s sexuality and went, in Chastity’s words, “ballistic.” However, a year later, she was over it, and she “came out” herself as the mother of a lesbian, showing her pride on gay magazine The Advocate’s front cover. Of course, Cher then became renowned for being an LGBT ally.

Sadly, Chastity’s good relations with Sonny faltered when the latter won election to Congress as a Republican. So fierce were their political disagreements that they stopped speaking to each other. And that had lasted longer than a year when Sonny had an horrific skiing accident that ended his life in 1998.

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In 2008 Chastity underwent more upheaval with the beginning of his transition to the man whom he had known himself to be. His name changed legally to Chaz. But it wasn’t simply a matter of changing names. He said in his documentary Becoming Chaz, “There was a number of years where I knew I was transgender, but was afraid to do anything about it.”

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Again, the changes in Chaz’s life struck Cher hard, and she had to get used to the idea. She told lifestyle website Monagiza in September 2019, “You have this child for 40 years, and suddenly they’re going away.” But once more she did come to terms with Chaz’s change, and she was able to give him support in whatever he chose.

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Chaz expressed his gratitude for that support, and he claimed that they have a strong relationship. This was despite Cher’s occasional lapse into being “overbearing.” And her other son, Elijah Blue, echoed that she had made an effort to be a good mother, accepting, though, that it had not been easy given her fame.

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One reason Elijah Blue may have struggled to form a good relationship with Cher was that he was sent away to school as a child, attending a succession of places. At one point, he was sent to military school as a “punishment.” However, Elijah Blue reported that he actually enjoyed that experience.

Indeed, Elijah Blue told U.K. newspaper the Daily Mail in 2014 that going away to school had “saved” him from the Hollywood lifestyle. He explained to Monagiza in 2019, “There were a lot of big parties and there was an era for that… when I was a little kid like in the ’80s there was a lot of that.”

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Given his father’s profession, it’s perhaps no surprise that Elijah Blue became a guitarist. Gifted his initial instrument by Gene Simmons of Kiss, Elijah Blue toured with his mom when only 13. He tried out to play for Nine Inch Nails, unsuccessfully, and started his own band Deadsy, for which he played guitar and sang.

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A negative feature of Elijah Blue’s life was his problems with addiction. He told the Daily Mail, “My drug addiction was pretty much about an eight-year thing of really heavy using. I was taking lots of drugs on the road. I was smoking dope [heroin], taking a lot of pills, any painkiller we could get, and drinking.” However, he did quit heroin for good in 2008.

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Having survived the party lifestyle, Elijah Blue would be struck down by illness. He contracted Lyme disease, possibly when swimming in India. Doctors were bemused by his symptoms, particularly when he didn’t test positive for Lyme disease. He told the Daily Mail, “After that, I kind of gave up that allopathic Western medicine route and went natural.”

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Elijah Blue did find some comfort in love with wife-to-be Angie. But Cher ignored the couple’s engagement, so Elijah Blue struck back. He told the Daily Mail, “I wasn’t going to wait for anyone’s approval and congratulations just like I’ve never waited for any of that my whole life. The way I eloped with my wife is the same way I’ve done everything I’ve ever done. I don’t know any other way and we knew it was the right time.”

Elijah Blue continued, “I’ve always been the black sheep of my family. The reason being, we just have different value systems and we just have a different mentality, and that clashes a lot. We have lots of ups and downs and right now isn’t the best time. Had we been getting on a little bit better… maybe it would have been different.”

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However, Elijah Blue was able to make a better friendship with his dad before the latter’s 2017 demise. He told the Daily Mail in 2014, “It’s not that it’s been bad [their relationship) just been very absentee. I’ve forgiven him for that. I’ve seen my dad a lot more in the last year than I have in a long time. That was something that was absent when I was growing up and it’s important to mend fences now in our relationship.”

Cher’s two sons do not have a particularly good relationship, however. Elijah Blue told TV show Entertainment Tonight in 2014, “We were close [growing up]. I think what happened was, Chaz went off to a performing arts school back east and I went off back east as well, later to prep school, and so, you know, from there we kind of took different paths, but for a minute growing up we were kind of close, yeah. We kind of grew apart.”

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When asked about Chaz’s transition, Elijah Blue described it as a “challenge.” He said, “I mean, I knew about it many years ago. This had been sort of bouncing around for about a decade, and I went to that first year ‘manniversary.’ Any psychiatrist will tell you that there’s a period of time that you have to come to terms with it.”