Barry Manilow is an iconic singer and songwriter with a career that spans decades, and over 50 top 40 Adult Contemporary Chart singles under his belt. He’s a winner of Tony and Grammy Awards, multiple Emmy and American Music Awards, and he boasts a coveted star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2002, he was inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame.
But what has Barry’s life been like behind the curtain? The world-famous performer married TV executive Garry Kief in 2014 after a decades-long romance during which they waited for same-sex marriage to become legal in California. Prior to that, he had a short-lived marriage in the 1960s.
Here’s everything to know about Barry Manilow’s husband and his past marriage to Susan Deixler.
Barry met Garry Kief, the man who would become both his spouse and his manager, in 1978. According to a 2017 interview with People, Barry knew at the outset that the relationship would be serious. “I knew that this was it,” he said at the time. “I was one of the lucky ones. I was pretty lonely before that. … Garry didn’t know what I did, even though I had all these records out. He was a guy, and I was a guy, so we could just deal with each other like two normal people, not like a superstar and a person.”
They married in April of 2014, in an intimate ceremony at their 53-acre Palm Springs estate, making what he said was already a serious commitment legal. “We’ve been married all these years,” he told People as the relationship became public. “It’s just that it became legal.” And he admitted the experience was “emotional.” “I didn’t think it was going to be that emotional,” he told People. “It was deeper than we thought it was going to be, looking at each other, saying, ‘I love you’ in front of people.”
Garry has one daughter, Kirsten, who was just a year old when the couple first met. In a 2017 interview with Michael Cavacini, Barry opened up about raising a daughter. “Garry and I have been together going on 40 years, and we raised a daughter,” he shared. “She turned out to be a great, beautiful girl … Our relationship and my being gay — I’ve always been a proud gay man. I’ve always been very proud of Garry and I.”
Garry, whom Barry says is “the smartest person I’ve ever met in my life — and a great guy, too,” is the CEO of Stiletto Entertainment. He’s also worked with Lorna Luft and musician Matt Dusk, among others.
