Ronnie Spector - Personal Life

Personal Life

She was born Veronica Yvette Bennett in New York City. From an early age, she took to singing, encouraged by her large, close family. The other members of the Ronettes, her sister, Estelle Bennett (1941-2009), and cousin, Nedra Talley, were also encouraged to sing by their family. The Ronettes were a multiracial group. The Bennetts' mother was African-American and Cherokee, and their father was Irish; their cousin, Nedra Talley, is African-American and Puerto Rican.

Bennett was married to Phil Spector from 1968 to 1974, and took his name professionally; they adopted three children, including a set of twins, whom Phil adopted as a single parent after Ronnie and the youngest child left:

• Donté Phillip (b. March 23, 1969; adopted November 1969, aged 8 months)
• Louis Phillip (b. May 12, 1966; adopted at the age of 5)
• Gary Phillip (b. May 12, 1966; adopted at the age of 5)

By her account, Phil kept Ronnie a near-prisoner and limited her opportunities to pursue her musical ambitions. In her autobiography, she said that he would force her to watch the film Citizen Kane to remind her she would be nothing without him. Spector's domineering attitude led to the dissolution of their marriage. Bennett was forbidden to speak to the Rolling Stones or tour with the Beatles, because Phil Spector feared that she would be unfaithful.

Bennett claims Spector showed her a gold coffin with a glass top in his basement, promising to kill and display her if she left him. During Spector's reclusive period in the late 1960s, he reportedly kept his wife locked inside their mansion. She claimed he also hid her shoes to dissuade her from walking outside, and kept the house dark because he did not want anyone to see his balding head. Ronnie stated in her autobiography that she walked out of the house through the closed and locked rear sliding glass door, shoeless, shattering the glass as she left, and feet all cut up by the time she got to the gate. She never returned. Ronnie Spector filed for divorce in 1972. She wrote a book about her experiences, and said years later: "I can only say that when I left in the early 1970s, I knew that if I didn't leave at that time, I was going to die there." She and Spector separated in 1973 and divorced one year later. In August 2011, Spector admitted that she went to rehab in order to escape living with Phil.

Ronnie's autobiography, Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, co-authored with Vince Waldron, was published in 1989. In 2004, Onyx Books republished the book in a revised and updated mass-market paperback edition in the United States. She lives in Connecticut with her second husband, Jonathan Greenfield, and their two sons, Austin Drew and Jason Charles. She has been performing Ronnie Spector's Christmas Party annually since the late 1980s around the United States and for the last ten years in New York City at B. B. King's Blues Club and Grill.