1995–1999 Debbie Rowe

Rebbie Jackson, OK! May, 1998:

One family member she has yet to get the chance to accept is Michael’s wife Debbie Rowe, the mother of his heir Prince Michael Jr. “I have never met Debbie, so I don’t know what she’s like,” she explains.

Daily Record, May 1 1998

Pop superstar Michael Jackson stunned a Scots designer by snapping up pounds 68000 worth of outfits for his wife. Dundee-born David Rees was packing up after a show when Jackson wandered into his Paris salon. David, 33, hastily organised a private show – and Jackson snapped up 17 designs worth a cool pounds 4000 apiece.

He said the outfits were for his wife, former doctor’s assistant Debbie Rowe, 38. David said the star walked in after he finished showing his autumn collection at the Hotel Crillon in Paris. And he added: “He wants to see my next collection. That can’t be a bad thing.”

October 29 1998

Michael & Debbie go to the Getty museum in Los Angeles with Prince & Paris.

December 10 1998

Michael & Debbie attend a dinner in honour of Dr Arnold Klein (dermatologist of Michael & boss of Debbie)

14th December, 1998

The Best scene at L’Orangerie in Hollywood was the arrival of Michael Jackson and wife Debbie Rowe at an intimate dinner for Debbie’s boss dermatologist Arnie Klein. The diner was a little thank-you to Arnie from the American Federation for AIDS Research for all the support he has given to the great AIDS-fighting organization. Jane and Michael Eisner were the hosts. Wallis Annenberg, the Gregory Pecks, Penny Marshall, and Carrie Fisher were in attendance too. (There had been some hope that Elizabeth Taylor might appear, but she didn’t.)

Michael looked like, well Michael. “He’s got a late 60′s Jackie Onassis thing going,” one onlooker said of Michael’s getup. But Rubenesque Debbie sported a slimmer silhouette and much improved hair color. ” She looked almost stunning.” And of even more consequence, this odd couple seemed very cozy, like any other husband and wife out to diinner. Photos of Michael and Debbie were taken for Kleins memory book, but then Michael surprised everybody by saying,” Oh, why don’t you sell these and make a few dollars for AmFar?”

Dec 27, 1998

DINERS at a chic LA restaurant were stunned to see Michael Jackson and his wife Debbie Rowe enjoying a romantic dinner together by candlelight. Can it be that the two are trying to behave like a normal couple?

Daily News 1998.

The news in November 1996 that Debbie Rowe was pregnant with Michael Jackson’s child stunned even the star’s most devoted fans. Her name had not figured before in this official -or unofficial- life story and no one knew who she was or what the nature of her relationship with Michael was.

Michael, for so long supposed to be, at best, androgynous, had in fact met Debbie 15 years earlier when she was a shy and retiring nurse and a divorcee. Theirs had been a romantic, wholesome relationship that came about by chance. The story of how it developed adds a new and unexpected dimension to the life of one of the world’s most successful and controversial entertainer.

Debbie’s colleagues say that whenever Michael came to Klein’s office, she took special care to make certain he was happy by fussing over him and seeing what she could do to make his visit more pleasant.

As a thank-you, Michael would always send her an autographed copy of his latest CD. Debbie would hang the CD picture jackets all over the office until, one day, Klein made her take them down. He told her that the display of affection was “a little inappropriate”.

“Then came the day when Debbie saw Michael naked, which was about five years ago,” recalls a former employee of Klein’s. “Michael had to disrobe for an examination and Debbie accidentally walked in on him. I don’t know what happened, but Debbie was in that examining room with him for a while. Later she said: ‘I’m probably the only woman who has ever seen Michael Jackson naked’. After that she would giggle a lot and blush whenever Michael came into the office.

“When Debbie was asked if she was romantically interested in Michael, she’d turn beetroot red. She ended up marrying someone else for a few years -divorced him in 1990 because she said she felt trapped -but she remained interested in Michael.”

In fact, Debbie and Michael had become close friends, confiding in one another about their lives and their unhappy marriages: Debbie’s to a man she said didn’t understand her need for freedom and Michael’s to Lisa Marie Presley, whom he whined was always “trying to change me.”

Debbie was so close to Michael that she was one of the few friends who assisted him during the allegations that were made about him molesting an underage boy, a time when, in his misery, he had become addicted to drugs. “I know when Michael was addicted, Debbie stayed on the telephone for hours and hours, pleading with him to save himself”, says Debbie’s friend Tonya Boyd. “She told me that she said: ‘If you die, I will be crushed. I wouldn’t be able to survive it. You are my very life’.”

As it happened, Lisa Marie Presley was also instrumental in helping Michael during that difficult time. So was Elizabeth Taylor. It would seem that Michael Jackson, a person not particularly known as a ladies’ man, had all of these women -a rock ‘n’ roll heiress, a screen star and a nurse- wrapped around his little finger, as he played the role of a helpless child.

Debbie was taken by surprise. One friend says: “She called me on November 12, 1996, and said: ‘Hey, guess what? I’m marrying Michael tomorrow.’ I asked her if she loved him. She stalled. Then she said: ‘Well, yes, I do. Kinda. I do.’ So, I pushed on. ‘Romantically?’ I asked. She paused, and said: ‘The kind of love we have is bigger, more important, than that’.”

They were duly married at a hotel between Michael’s touring commitments. Afterwards, it was rumored that Debbie Rowe received $1 million to give birth to Michael’s son Prince Michael Jr. However, according to reliable sources in the Jackson camp, Rowe actually received $500,000 -and not to give birth but rather as a “wedding gift”. Any story that she has a contract with Michael Jackson, and that she has received millions of dollars to bear his children, is simply untrue. Indeed no document has ever surfaced to support the rumor.

“None of it is true,” Debbie said when pressed to confirm stories of a deal. “Why won’t people believe me? I would never have his children for money. I am doing it because I am his dear friend. And I told him: ‘If this marriage becomes a problem and starts interfering with our friendship, then it must end.’ The friendship, that’s the important thing. I love my freedom. I will never settle down. That’s just not me. I can’t be what people want me to be, what Michael’s fans might want me to be. I have to be who I am. I am happy with things the way they are and it’s really nobody’s business.”

Jackson puts aside $10 million a year for Rowe, and has bought stocks and other annuities for her, too. But she doesn’t use the money. Ever since she married Michael, Debbie has been shuttled from modest rented home to rented home in the LA suburbs in an effort to put the media off the scent. Only two weeks ago, she moved again.

Michael is planning to buy her and exclusive home in Bel Air, according to sources, but he will continue to live abroad. In recent years, he has rented luxurious hideaways in France, Britain and Ireland. He has been trying to sell his palatial Neverland ranch -with its 27,000 acres, funfair and zoo, at Santa Ynez, California- for five years. Only the care-taking staff lives there these days.

Debbie and Michael spend little time together. She has made no demands on him whatsoever, and seems content. She sees friends, some of them men, from time to time. But those who know her well explain that she has always had low self-esteem, in the sense that as long as she can make another person happy, she doesn’t care about her own happiness.

In the meantime, Michael has gotten the children he desired, the children Lisa Marie wouldn’t -or couldn’t- give him, and Debbie has been able to keep her cherished freedom. She wanted only to give birth to Michael Jackson’s children. She never wanted to be a mother to them, or a wife to him.

“They’re adults,” Tonya Boyd explains. “Say what you want, have any judgment you like about it, but it’s their life, and they get to live it whatever way they choose.”

Jan 29 1999

Lisa Marie then wanted me to tell her my sources for various items about her ex-husband Michael Jackson and his current wife, Debbie Rowe! I declined, of course. And she declined to say much else, either – merely that she is busy in the recording studio, making an album. “Things are going well. My kids are good!” She promised she’d talk to me when she is ready with the album. So wait for it. You and I have no choice.

Magazine: Brides; A date with romance: In Brief; Jewels; With this ring, Feb 14, 1999

Debbie Rowe, Mrs. Michael Jackson and mother of his son, didn’t say beat it when he presented her with a platinum wedding band with diamond baguettes, which reputedly cost $100000.

Evening Standard, March 5 1999

MICHAEL Jackson’s wife Debbie Rowe was spotted in the Pleasure Chest sex shop in Los Angeles, stocking up on strawberry massage oil, fishnets tights and glow-in-the-dark condoms.

Mirror, 12th April 1999

“To help them grow and let them know you love them by looking them in the eyes, and saying ‘I love you.” And play, play, play with them.”‘ The singer, who spends £3,000 a day on 24-hour nannies, lives apart from Debbie, 40. But he laughs at suggestions his marriage is a sham. He insists: “I love my wife, and we have a happy marriage.

“Debbie is a nurse who loves her work, who loves taking care of people. Every day she wants to get up and look after others, to help them and make them better.

“That’s why I love her, and that’s what gives her bliss in life, God bless her.”‘

Debbie – who met Jackson when she worked as a dermatology nurse and treated him for his skincomplaint vitiligo – is on record as saying: “Michael is a doting father. I know the children are safe whenever they’re with him.”

Further discussion about the marriage is not forthcoming. But again, you are left with a sneaking, dreadful feeling that Jackson might actually be telling the truth. That he might genuinely love his wife after all.

They may even, incredibly, have had sex.

Checks into hospital, April 17/18 1999

Roger Friedman’s column on February 7, 2005:

Michael Jackson checked himself into New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital for two days back in 1999.

The exact dates were April 17 and 18, and the alias he used was “James Walker.”

At the time, he was still married to, though not living with, his second wife, Debbie Rowe, and he already had custody of their two children, Prince and Paris.

Rowe, according to sources, did not know of the hospitalization. Neither did most of Jackson’s close associates.

When he finally checked into Lenox Hill, Jackson was alone most of the time, without any entourage, assistants or pets. Horovitz treated him with IV fluids.

“My job was to hydrate him quickly,” the doctor recalled. “I put the IV in myself, and there was no one else around.”

He ran blood tests, but not for drugs. He said he did not see pill bottles with Jackson, and there was no indication that he was medicating himself at the time. Jackson’s only diversion in his overnight stay was a boom box.

June 2, 1999

There are conflicting reports out of New York that Michael Jackson’s two-year-old son Prince may be seriously ill, and maybe even dying, from a viral infection.

The singer withdrew from Tuesday night’s “Pavarotti & Friends” benefit for Warchild to remain with his son in a New York hospital.

But Jackson’s wife Debbie Rowe, who says she found out about her son’s illness watching the news, says Prince isn’t dying, and she told KNBC in Los Angeles that doctors and even Jackson himself told her that Prince would be fine. In addition, Pavarotti’s spokeswoman, who attended the concert, told MTV News Wednesday that the opera singer never told the sold-out crowd of 17,000 that Jackson’s son was dying. She says Pavarotti’s statement (which was in Italian) was mistranslated by the press, and that Pavarotti said the boy was sick, not dying. As of press time, representatives for Jackson were not available for comment.

July 5-13 1999


Michael, Grace & the kids stay at Disneyland Paris where they are joined by Debbie.

Mid July, 1999

Separation date listed in Debbie’s divorce papers

September 11-14 1999


Michael is in Disneyland Paris with Grace & the kids. Debbie joins them.

October 8 1999

Pop superstar Michael Jackson and his wife of three years, Deborah Rowe, filed for divorce today in a Los Angeles Superior Court, citing irreconcilable differences.

The divorce petition states that Rowe and Jackson have reached a confidential financial settlement, though it did not indicate if an agreement regarding custody of the couple’s two children had been settled, according to the Associated Press. Rowe and Jackson are parents to a 2-year-old boy, Prince Michael, and a 1-year-old girl, Paris Michael Katherine. The couple has apparently been separated since mid-July. Jackson wed Rowe, a nurse from his plastic surgeon’s office, in November 1996, less than a year after divorcing his first wife, Lisa Marie Presley, after two years of marriage.

Schmuley Tapes, 2000/1

In 1994 Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley but the marriage ended in divorce after two years. In 1996 he married Debbie Rowe the mother of his two children. The three-year marriage ended when Rowe filed for divorce last October.

“I know he was pretty torn up over it. … We left that one alone,” Boteach said.

“I am not privy to the terms of Michael’s divorce,” says Boteach. “But he is cut up over it. She has made visits to the children, but I don’t know how often. What I do know is that Michael is a very understanding father.”

Schmuley on Howard Stern, 6 Apr 2001

Howard: “What about Debbie Rowe? Were they together when you met Michael?”

Rabbi: “They were just coming apart then.”

Howard: “What about his kids? Did he father those kids?”

Rabbi: “Of course. Prince looks like his father. He has Michael’s eyes, the same blotches on his skin.”

Howard: “Does the mom see the kids?”

Rabbi: “Sometimes”

October 17 2001

Represented by attorney Iris Finsilver, Debbie Rowe goes to the family court in Los Angeles to give up her parental rights on Prince & Paris because she says she has not seen them for a year and did not want to disturb them by making intrusions in their life once in a while.

Hearing transcript:

Q. When is the last time you saw the children?
A. I think it was either August or October of last year when I gave up my visitation rights.
Q. Have you communicated with either of the children –
A. No.
Q. — Over the past year?
A. Not at all.
Q. Do you wish to communicate with the children?
A. No.
Q. Do you ever have the desire to call the children over the telephone?
A. No.
Q. Do you have a desire to send any cards or letters to the children?
A. No.
Q. Do you want the court to terminate your parental right?
A. Yes
Q. Okay.
A. Because –
Q. That was my next question. Why?
A. Because Michael is a wonderful man, first of all, a brilliant father. And it’s the best — as their mother, it is the best interest for the children. I don’t know if Judge Lachs understands this. But when I was seeing them every 45 days, it felt like an intrusion on their life and they’re going to have enough intrusions as it is. I don’t want to be part of it. I’m absolutely around if ever Michael needs me, if the children need me for a liver, kidney, a hello, whatever, I will always be around for him. These are his children. I had the children for him. They wouldn’t be on this planet if it wasn’t for my love of him. I did it for him to become a father. Not for me to become a mother. You earn the title parent. I have done absolutelynothing to earn that title.
Q. How long have you thought about your decision?
A. Since — I’ve thought about it for a year. The reason I didn’t do it a year ago, everybody would have gone “UH”, “Uh”, “Uh”, GASP, GASP, GASP. “Oh my God, have you thought this out?” So just so everybody understands, I’ve thought about this a lot. And this is — this is for what’s the best for the kids
…
Do you understand that in the future you will not be able to go back into court to reinstate your parental right?
I undertand that.
Q. Have you ever considered the possibility if Michael should die, what would happen to the children?
A. I’m sure he’s – he has a wonderful person in mind to take care of them.

TV Guide, November 2001

TVG: Which one of your kids is most like you?

MJ: Both, but in different ways. Prince likes to tease, to the point where you want to pull his hair. I always used to tease my sisters all the time.

TVG: And Paris?

MJ: She’s the tough one.

TVG: How is their mother, Debbie Rowe? [A former nurse, she was married to Jackson from 1996 to '99. Jackson was married to his first wife, Lisa Marie Presley, from 1994 to '96]

MJ: I heard she’s doing good, she’s fine. Paris is strong like Debbie.

Jermaine Jackson on Larry King, January 9, 2003

KING: By the way, we asked about Lisa Marie. Does Michael keep in touch with Debbie Rowe, his second wife?

JERMAINE JACKSON: I’m pretty sure, yes. Yes. But those are questions that you should ask him.

KING: Because he’s got the children though, right?

JERMAINE JACKSON: Yes.

KING: I did mention the second marriage. Did that end badly?

JERMAINE JACKSON: I really don’t know.

KING: You don’t know Debbie Rowe then?

JERMAINE JACKSON: Debbie Rowe?

KING: Yes, I mean you know her.

JERMAINE JACKSON: Well, not know her, know her. I know that’s where the children came from.

KING: Did that end badly?

JERMAINE JACKSON: I really don’t know. You would have to speak with him about that.

Debbie Rowe Speak Out In Defense Of Michael, February 6, 2003

In the wake of all of the media frenzy surrounding the 90-minute interview, *’Living With Michael Jackson’ which originally aired on Monday in Britain, Michael’s ex-wife, Debbie Rowe, gave an exclusive interview to GMTV in the U.K. Debbie, horrified by the way in which the media has treated Michael since the interview, had these words to say in his defense:

“He is a wonderful, caring man and he’s not portrayed as he really is and it really pisses me off. There could be no other person that could be a better father and I resent anyone making allegations that he is not a parent, and that he is not a proper parent.

No one has ever read more about parenting, no one has ever practised the art of parenting and parenting is an art, you earn the title parent. Because you give birth, because you impregnate someone, it does not automatically give you that title of Mother or Father. You earn the title.

My kids don’t call me mom because I don’t want them to, they’re not, they’re Michael’s children, it’s not that they’re not my children, but I had them because I wanted him to be a father. I believe that there are some people who should be parents and he’s one of them, and he is such a fabulous man and such a good friend and he’s always been there for me, always, from the day I met him. I could do something for him and this is what I wanted to do, you know and people don’t understand that and they want a traditional they think that something has to be traditional and they have this notion of beaver cleaver. That’s, that wasn’t reality in the 50′s and that’s not reality, you know in the 21st century.”

2003, Bashir Take Two

In Take 2, Debbie refused to answer the question wether she had sex with Michael “That’s non of your business and very inappropriate to ask”… but then she said this:

“One of the best things to do is… what I think…When you love someone… don’ t you ever wake up in the middle of the night and just… look at ’em? And see the beauty. I mean that’s… peace. That’… calm. That’s, that’s how that person is. You know you don’t see the stress of the day or what’s going on, you know. And I could sit and stare at him for hours. Cause it was calm.“

“To try and prevent some of the taboo, you know if you have a child out of wedlock. The kids were gonna have it hard enough as it was. They didn’t need to have that label placed upon them, like their father had so many placed upon him. They shouldn’t. If there’s one way we could remove it or try to make it what people thought “normal.”

Lisa, Playboy, June 2003

PLAYBOY: Did you and Michael discuss having kids?

PRESLEY: Yeah. [Laughs] I got out of that one. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea right now.” But I knew that’s what he wanted. And I knew Debbie Rowe was offering to do it for him while we were married, according to him. She was a nurse who had a crush on him and offered to have his babies.

PLAYBOY: Was he trying to leverage you into agreeing?

PRESLEY: Kind of. “Debbie Rowe says she’ll do it.” Ok, have Debbie Rowe do it! And it’s funny, when I imagined having a child with him, all I could ever see was a custody battle nightmare.

PLAYBOY: He just wanted to find someone to bear his children.

PRESLEY: I think so, but I don’t know.

PLAYBOY: Do you want more kids?

PRESLEY: I’d like two more.

PLAYBOY: And if you don’t have someone to be the father–

PRESLEY: Are you kidding me? No, I will not go to a sperm donor. I could ask Debbie Rowe to be a surrogate for me.