Willie Nelson has never been shy about his infidelities and past marriages, having been married four times. Nelson opened up about his infidelities again in a new preview for Harvey Levin’s OBJECTified.
“I’ve been married four times, and traveling on the road the way I do — or did, whatever — is not healthy for marriages,” Nelson said in a clip for Sunday’s episode.
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“There’s a story about Shirley that, I guess that fell apart when somebody sent her the invoice for the birth of a baby,” Levin began.
“I could see how that would upset her,” Nelson dryly added.
“Yeah, not her baby, but your baby! That kind of did it there, didn’t it?” the TMZ founder asked.
“Well it didn’t help the situation,” Nelson replied with a smile.
Levin was referring to the story of how Nelson’s marriage to Shirley Collie ended. The two were married from 1963 until 1971, when a Houston hospital sent her a bill for the birth of Paula Carlene Nelson. The only problem was that Collie was not Paula’s mother. Instead, her mother was Connie Koepke, who Nelson married in late 1971.
According to a 1980 PEOPLE profile, Nelson married Koepke before his divorce from Collie was finalized. The two met when Nelson performed in Cut and Shoot, Texas.
Nelson and Koepke had another daughter before divorcing in 1988. In 1991, Nelson married for a fourth time, to Annie D’Angelo, his current wife. Nelson and D’Angelo met in 1986, when Nelson starred in a made-for-TV Stagecoach remake. D’Angelo was a makeup artist on the film.
“She’s been with me through thick and thin — you can’t ask for anything more than that,” Nelson told Rolling Stone in 2014.
In a 2010 interview with The Telegraph, Nelson said he does not refer to his ex-wives as “exes,” but instead as “additional wives” because his family remains a part of him.
“You don’t have to be selfish because your ambition and drive is for your family members as much as for yourself. Along the way you pick up wives and kids and you are responsible for them,” Nelson said. “You don’t discard them. There is no such thing as ex-wives, only additional wives.”
Despite recent health scares, Nelson, 85, is still recording and performing on the sage. Earlier this week, Nelson released a video for “I’ll Be Around,” a track from his upcoming album of Frank Sinatra covers, titled My Way.
My Way hits stores on Sept. 14. Nelson’s OBJECTified episode airs Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on Fox News.
Photo credit: Jason Davis/Getty Images for SiriusXM
