Linda Ronstadt's Relationship History Is Packed With Celebrity Men

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Linda Ronstadt enjoyed a prolific career spanning various musical genres, from rock to jazz, Mexican, Afro-Cuban, opera, and country. She made her debut in the mid-1960s and has won 11 Grammy Awards to date. The music icon was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. While Ronstadt is known best for hits like "Blue Bayou," "Somewhere Out There," and "Tú Sólo Tú," she also made a memorable impression as Mabel in the 1983 film version of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, "The Pirates of Penzance." Her real-life relationships also caught the attention of the media over the years, so let's look back at the most famous men she once dated.

Ronstadt has never been married, but she enjoys life as a single mom, having adopted a girl, Mary Clementine, in 1990, and a boy, Carlos, in 1994. She spoke to NPR in 2013 about her past relationships, saying, "I think I was reasonably monogamous in a serial way. But I'm not a good compromiser. I think I don't have a knack for the kind of compromise. I admire people's marriages, and I think it's a wonderful thing to have. But I don't think it's the only way to live."

Sadly, the international icon, who has been diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, is now retired. She'll always be remembered as "the First Lady of Rock," one who charmed numerous celebrities with her powerful voice and deep brown eyes. From John Boylan to Jerry Brown and George Lucas, these were her most notable romances.

Linda Ronstadt first crossed paths with record producer John Boylan in 1970 at the Troubadour, a famous West Hollywood club. When a mutual friend introduced them, she asked Boylan to put together a band for her. "Being a tremendous fan of her, I'm shaking with excitement. I said, 'Yeah, I'd love to!'" Boylan recalled in a 2025 interview with WSDG (an acoustics and AV firm). That backup group would later evolve into its own successful band: the Eagles. Meanwhile, Boylan helped cement Ronstadt as a country rock star in the 1970s; he produced many of her songs over the years.

The pair spent so much time together that they fell in love before eventually calling it quits in 1973. As the artist told Rolling Stone in 1975, "I'd wake up and call him and ask, 'Gee, what should I do today? What socks should I put on?' It was very unhealthy, and it went on for a couple of years. And finally, in the middle of the Neil Young tour, we were just getting on each other's nerves too much and I was turning into an idiot, and I wasn't doing any thinking for myself, and it wasn't right."

Comedian, actor, writer, and producer Steve Martin's impressive list of exes includes Kristin Davis, Anne Heche, and Linda Ronstadt. The "Cheaper by the Dozen" star was already a fan of the exceptional singer before they even met. In his 2009 interview with "American Masters PBS's "Inventing David Geffen," he nostalgically recalled, "I opened for Linda Ronstadt ... And she was one of the most potent live talents you ever saw. She wore [a] silver lamé dress that was cut so short you couldn't believe it. She wore no shoes and had that great, great voice."

Nevertheless, their relationship was brief and essentially platonic. As Martin chronicled in his autobiography "Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life" (via Lost Canyons LA), "Linda and I saw each other for a while, but I was so intimidated by her talent and street smarts that, after the ninth date, she finally said, 'Steve, do you often date girls and not try to sleep with them?' We parted chaste." Coincidentally, Martin's "Only Murders in the Building" co-star Selena Gomez is slated to play Ronstadt in an upcoming Miramax biopic.

After John Boylan, Linda Ronstadt's next significant professional and personal relationship was with J.D. Souther, a singer, songwriter, and actor who also collaborated with the Eagles, Bonnie Raitt, and James Taylor. He wrote several tracks for Ronstadt, including "Faithless Love" and "Prisoner in Disguise."

Souther and Ronstadt also connected at the Troubadour club, as per the 2019 documentary "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice." "She looked so cute," Souther recalled. "I just grabbed her by the hand, and I said, 'I think you should cook me dinner.' She said, 'Okay,' and gave me her phone number. I came on over, and she made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and I fell in love with her. The next day, I said, 'Listen, let's go get your stuff, you're going to live with me.'" So she moved into his Hollywood Heights bungalow. The couple broke up in 1974 but remained close friends until Souther died in 2024. "Linda and I talk regularly," he said in a 2015 Reddit Ask Me Anything. "She's the first person to hear my new album ["Tenderness"] when it was finished. In fact, I didn't think of it as finished until she had heard it."

Not long after J.D. Souther and Linda Ronstadt called it quits, the "You're No Good" singer moved on to (and moved in with) comedian and actor Albert Brooks. He, too, owned a home in the star-studded Hollywood Hills neighborhood. Though the couple parted ways in 1976, they've stayed friends. Brooks even expressed his joy on X in 2013 when news broke that Ronstadt would soon be inducted into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame. "About time!" he emphasized.

Ronstadt's 1975 interview with Rolling Stone revealed that she was completely smitten with Brooks, her then-boyfriend, and that she missed him terribly while on tour. "I like furry men. Albert's hairy," she revealed, before adding, "He's just like a human teddy bear." She also admitted she had fallen in love with other men for the wrong reasons, whereas she considered Brooks "the nicest person [she's] ever known."

One of Linda Ronstadt's most high-profile relationships was with California Governor Jerry Brown during his first two terms in office, from 1975 to 1983. The pair met years earlier at a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, when she was 25 years old, and he was 33 (and still Secretary of State). Their common interests included country music, Japanese cinema, ethnic cuisines, and romantic walks on the beach. For years, the press stalked them across the U.S. and overseas.

"He was smart and funny, not interested in drinking or drugs, and lived his life carefully, with a great deal of discipline," the "Por Un Amor" singer shared in her autobiography "Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir" (via KQED). "This was different from a lot of men I knew in rock and roll. I found it a relief. Also, he considered professionally many issues that I considered passionately: issues like the safety of nuclear power, plants, agricultural soil erosion, water politics, and farm workers' rights." The couple parted ways around 1980, after she helped him campaign for president, but they stayed friends.

Jim Carrey has experienced a rather tragic love life, but at least his romance with Linda Ronstadt was drama-free and based on mutual admiration. They first connected in 1983, when she attended his stand-up comedy act in Los Angeles and then invited him to open for her on her next tour. Though he declined her offer, he mustered the courage to ask her out instead. While Ronstadt was a 36-year-old superstar at the time, he was only 21, struggling to make ends meet, and still living with his parents. They weren't the first or the last celebrity couple with a big age difference, though, and they remained together for about eight months. In typical Carrey fashion, he later joked on a Canadian radio show in the early 1990s (via Jim Carrey Online), "She was just too young for me. I found an 80-year-old."

However, the comedian was more eloquent about the singer in his satirical autobiographical novel, "Memoirs and Misinformation." "It may have seemed like some, you know, boy-toy kind of situation to some people looking at it from the outside, but she treated me with incredible respect, and she loved my talent," he recalled during a 2020 promotional interview for his book on "The Howard Stern Show." He then added that she would predict to him, "You're going to be where I am. You're going to deal with all the stuff I've dealt with."

Many celebrity moms have chosen to have kids without a partner, including Linda Ronstadt. Though she's never walked down the aisle, she once came very close with none other than "Star Wars" creator George Lucas. The pair started their relationship in 1983 and dated discreetly for five years, even getting engaged before eventually calling it quits in 1988.

People reported on Ronstadt's relationship situation in 1984 (via Ronstadt-Linda.com), and revealed that according to their source, the singer and Jim Carrey broke up because Ronstadt wouldn't agree to be exclusive with Carrey. At the same time, Lucas had already split from his first wife, Marcia Griffin, and he and Ronstadt were introduced to each other through a mutual friend in December 1983. "George is so lucky to be with her," one of People's sources claimed. "He will have more fun than he's ever had in his life. Then she will break his heart into thousands of pieces and go on to someone else." Meanwhile, the singer was spending a lot of time on Skywalker Ranch, and she apparently loved her "The Empire Strikes Back" lunchbox.

Linda Ronstadt worked with many household names throughout the decades, including the Eagles' Don Henley, the stunning Dolly Parton, Neil Young, Aaron Neville, and Mick Jagger. These successful collaborations would sometimes spark dating rumors that were never confirmed. 

Jagger, one of several iconic stars from the '60s still active today, performed The Rolling Stones' hit "Tumbling Dice" live with Ronstadt in 1978. Back then, she had already made the US Top 40 with her own version of the song and was invited to join the rock band on stage in Tucson. Despite their obvious mutual admiration for one another, though, Jagger and Ronstadt were nothing more than flirtatious friends, apparently. "He's so strong, frighteningly bright," she admitted to Time Magazine in 1977, adding, "He's as bad as they say, and as good."

For his part, Neville had such obvious chemistry with Ronstadt that fans and the press alike couldn't help but wonder if they were ever an item. "We don't sing the same style at all," she told Entertainment Weekly in 1990, "but when we sing up high together we just blend." The artists recorded several massive songs together, including "Don't Know Much," "When Something Is Wrong with My Baby," and "All My Life."