What We Know About O.J. Simpson's Relationship With His First Wife Marguerite
Before O.J. Simpson died at the age of 76, the former football player was most known for standing accused of the infamous murder of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. Though Simpson was ultimately acquitted in the highly-publicized trial of 1995, a scandal that was covered by E! News, many questions have lingered about the San Francisco native's involvement in the crime.
While this makes his marriage to Brown Simpson his most notorious, it wasn't actually his first. The former Buffalo Bills player married his high school sweetheart, Marguerite Whitley, in 1967, several decades before he tied the knot with Brown Simpson. The two divorced in 1979, with Simpson revealing in an interview with People (via InTouch) that his rise to fame was a contributing factor to the end of their relationship.
"The price of fame was our biggest problem," he told the outlet. "My wife is a private person, yet we can't walk down the street without causing a commotion." As she continues to be a nonpublic individual, little is known about O.J. Simpson's marriage to Whitley, but his first wife did have some interesting things to say during his infamous trial.
The couple married when they were young
Marguerite Whitley and O.J. Simpson first began dating when they were in high school, with the young teen originally going out with Simpson's friend Al Cowlings. As reported by The New York Times, the couple started dating when Simpson was supposed to help work things out between Whitley and his friend, only to end up wooing the girl for himself.
Both Whitley and Simpson were young when they married, being 18 and 19 respectively. Throughout their marriage, which lasted roughly 12 years, the couple welcomed three children together: Arnelle, Jason, and Aaren. Their second daughter, Aaren, died in a drowning accident when she was nearly two years old. "I don't know how long it will take me to get over, but I know I need to keep busy," Simpson said about the loss (per CNN).
Simpson reportedly met Nicole Brown Simpson while he was still married to his first wife, with the then 18-year-old working at a Beverley Hills nightclub when they became acquainted. Not long after, Simpson and Whitley divorced in 1979. Since then, Whitley has been married at least twice — once in 1986 and then again in 1992.
Marguerite believed in O.J.'s innocence
Marguerite Whitley has lived primarily out of the spotlight since divorcing her then-husband in the late '70s, and while many stars, including Kim Kardashian, have stayed silent on the O.J. Simpson trial, Whitley gave a rare interview during the scandal. In a 1995 conversation with Barbara Walters, Whitley revealed that Simpson was never violent towards her during their marriage, denying that he had ever even "lift[ed] his hand" to her.
"If he did, he would have got a frying pan upside his head," she said. "There was just no way that I would allow that to happen to me" (per Jet). Reports of domestic abuse in Simpson's first marriage were made during his trial, with a police officer testifying that he had responded to a domestic violence call at their residence. Whitley denied these allegations in her interview, explaining that it was the first she had ever heard of the reported police appearance.
In addition to this, Whitley staunchly believed that Simpson was innocent of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. "He's just not like that," she said during her interview with Walters. "It's not something that O.J. would do."