Who Was Yoko Ono Married To Before John Lennon?

April 2024 ยท 2 minute read

Yoko Ono was in a complicated marriage with American filmmaker Anthony Cox. They met in 1961 when Cox flew to Tokyo specifically looking for the artist, according to a 1986 People report. He came across her work in an anthology and set his mind on finding the woman behind it, the report detailed. Cox found Ono in a psychiatric hospital where she was recovering from a mental illness, according to People. 

They married in November 1962, but the union was annulled in March 1963 because her divorce from Japanese composer and pianist Toshi Ichiyanagi hadn't been finalized, according to the Beatles Bible. Ono and Cox properly remarried on June 11 of that year, less than two months before the birth of their daughter Kyoko Ono Cox on August 8, 1963, as stated in William Baker's 2014 book "The Beatles Encyclopedia: Everything Fab Four."

According to Baker, Ono and Cox's relationship was tempestuous from the start and included a "knife fight" that had to be broken up by a friend. By the time she met John Lennon in 1966, their marriage was mostly over, but they didn't officially divorce until 1969, as court documents shared on Court Listener shows, the year she married Lennon. Ono and Lennon famously sent Cox a holiday card in 1968 to inform him she had collected her belongings from the home she shared with Cox, according to Vanity Fair. A few years later, Cox disappeared with their daughter.

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