The Kenny Rogers Marriage That Ended In A $40-60 Million Divorce: 'She Deserves Every Penny'

Kenny Rogers was a Grammy award-winning singer and songwriter who successfully crossed musical boundaries — adept at country, pop, jazz, folk, and rock. His first big hit was with the band The First Edition, which he formed in 1967. While his musical career continued to expand after that, his personal life was undergoing some big ups and downs. Rogers had a total of five wives during his life, and when The First Edition debuted, he was on his third wife. That marriage ended in 1976, and by 1977, Rogers got married again. Wife No.4 was Marianne Gordon, an actor whom you might recognize from "Hee Haw" or "Rosemary's Baby." They stayed together until 1993, and when they divorced, Gordon reportedly got $60 million. While some outlets have reported that the settlement was actually smaller, even the lower amount was $40 million (via Deseret News). It's a lot of money, but Rogers was completely fine with it. In fact, he thought she'd basically earned it.

When it came to the money that Gordon received in the split, Rogers said, "She deserves every penny," via the Irish Independent. That's not the attitude you get from every ex-husband. As for why Rogers was happy for Gordon to have all that money, one big reason came down to the early years of their marriage and how she supported him. By the time the two of them got married in 1977, The First Edition, then known as Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, had broken up and Rogers was in debt. However, Gordon was by his side through it all — wedding vows do often say "for richer, for poorer." She seems to have taken that to heart.

By the time that Kenny Rogers and Marianne Gordon split, Rogers had more than worked his way out of debt — he was worth quite a lot if Gordon walked away with around $40 to $60 million. With a settlement amount of that size, it would seem that Rogers was one of the celebrities who didn't have a prenup.

While there are some Hollywood marriages that end with drawn out and at times contentious divorces, that doesn't seem to have been the case here. Rogers talked with the Irish Independent in 2006 about how the two of them just essentially grew apart. "In fact, everything was fine until our son Christopher was born — but I wouldn't want him to take any responsibility for this," Rogers explained, adding how his relationship with Gordon suffered when she no longer traveled with him on tour: " ... I found that our lifestyles were clashing. So one day we just said, 'Life is short, we deserve to be happy, let's find something else to do with our lives,' and the marriage ended." As Rogers sang in his famous song "The Gambler" — "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em."

After Rogers died in 2020, Gordon had nothing but kind words about her ex-husband. "It's very upsetting when I start talking about him," she told Closer Weekly. "For 17 of 21 years, every day, he was so sweet. ... The end of a relationship like that can be devastating, but there were so many fabulous memories. I like to think about those."