Cher Recalls Her 3-Day Rise To Fame: ‘Everything Happened So Fast’

Everyone knows Cher, and if you don’t, go get to know her. The music icon rose to fame at just 19 years old, and in a new interview with Elle more than 50 years since her big take-off, she’s opening up about her three-day rise to fame as part of the Sonny & Cher duo with ex-husband Sonny Bono.

The two immediately hit it off, and before they knew it, they were selling millions of records together thanks to their 1965 hit “I Got You, Babe.” “I swear, it was like the Maria and Tony scene,” Cher recalled, referencing Westside Story. “Everyone just disappeared. He was the most unusual person I’d ever seen. He had longish hair, and he had the most beautiful suit on, and beautiful long fingers, and Beatle boots, but they were Cuban heels.”

But once the couple — who married in 1969 and divorced in 1975 — took off in the music industry, people didn’t respond to their chemistry as they imagined they would. “They didn’t resonate at first. Kids liked it, but adults just hated us,” Cher, 72, confessed. “I mean, really hated us. Fistfights hate.'”

However, that didn’t stop them from achieving fame — instantly. “It sounds so dumb, but everything happened so fast,” she admitted of their music career. “I didn’t even know where I was. One day we were poor. Two days, three days later, we were famous.”

Even though the pair literally took off overnight, she also opened up about the tougher times in her life, which are chronicled in the Broadway musical The Cher Show.

“I’ve had huge failures in my life. Huge dips and ‘Oh, you’re over. You’re over,'” she said. “This one guy once said, ‘You’re over,’ every year for I don’t know how many years. And I just said to him, ‘You know what? I will be here when you’re not doing what you do anymore.’ I had no idea if I was right or wrong. I was just tired of hearing him say it.”

Cher was far from over then, and she’s far from over now!