Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes’ first marriage ended on a “sour note”: why has he never married again?

Not all marriages last. Sometimes, people realise that they are not suited for each other and decide to part ways than stick it out and be miserable together.

Duran Duran’s keyboard player Nick Rhodes has been married only once and it ended in divorce. Nick, the son of an engineer and a toy shop owner in Birmingham, came from a normal household but ended up marrying the daughter of an American millionaire. However, there was something that was common between the two.

Nick worked as a window dresser for his mother on the weekends and won a national prize for window-dressing when he was 12, he told The Guardian. Similarly, his ex-wife - Julie Anne Friedman - started out working in the family business in her teens and aspired to be a window dresser. The difference was that she was the heiress to Iowa’s Younkers Department Store fortune.

How did they meet?

The musician met Julie, who is three years older than him, at a yacht party in the 1980s, according to Ageist. Julie, who was a model back then, and Nick had a whirlwind romance. She traveled with him to London, New York and Paris.

“It’s very hard to describe living inside a bubble like that — I’m glad I experienced it, but I’m also glad my entire life isn’t lived that way,” she told Ageist.

They married in 1984 in one of the biggest weddings at the time and their night was counted among the likes of JFK, Marilyn Monroe, and Grace Kelly. Their wedding had live pink flamingoes, flowing pink champagne, and dinner at the Savoy Hotel for 219 guests, according to Julie’s blog - The Roving Stove.

Her parents threw a party for their 75 guests on a boat that cruised the Thames. It was a massive wedding and they almost didn’t make it.

“We nearly missed our own wedding the next morning when our make-up artist turned up late,” she added. Julie joked that the wedding was so massive her father might still be paying for it.

A 1931 Cadillac took them to Marylebone registry office - where they tied the knot but the celebration went on until the next day at the Savoy.

Even at the wedding, she had eyes for no other. “I fell in love with Nick all over again when he danced with my Auntie Vera (Nick does not like dancing to put it mildly), after cutting the cake with me,” she wrote in her blog.

The break-up

The couple went on to have a daughter but eventually divorced in 1992. They were in a bitter custody battle over their daughter - Tatjana Lee Orchid. She moved to Los Angeles in 1998 but it was anything but pleasant for her.

“I’d been to so many court battles with my ex-husband, and had to leave my daughter in England and that was soul-destroying because that was who I was, being a mother,” she told Ageist. However, she said that while their marriage ended on “a sour note” they enjoy a “civil friendship” now.

Nick’s future relationships

Since his divorce, Nick has dated many women but never remarried. In 2013, when he was asked if he would marry his then-girlfriend - Italian Nefer Suvio, he gave a non comittal answer.

“Whether I will ever get married again I don’t know. We are happy as we are,” he was quoted as saying by The Daily Express. However, he had moved in with his girlfriend who was 19 years younger than him.