Dionne Warwick has been opening up about several topics lately, including her marriage, and the reason it ended.
In an interview with The Guardian, the legendary singer said being the “breadwinner” caused her marriage to William David Elliott to collapse.
The couple first married in 1966, then split in May 1967. They rekindled their relationship months later and remarried in August of 1967, but broke things off for good in 1975.
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Elliott, who passed away in 1983, was also in show business, and worked as an actor and a drummer. But due to his wife’s massive success, she was the moneymaker in the family and that put a burden on their marriage.
“I was the major earning power in the family, and that is very difficult for the male ego,” Warwick said. “It just got to be too much to bear for my husband, and we decided that it would be best for us to part ways.”
The Grammy winner, 79, said her contributions to the civil rights movement broke barriers in entertainment and opened doors for others. She also mentioned her very first Grammy win in 1969 for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the song, “Do You Know the Way to San Jose.”
“I’m not a marcher, I’m a doer,” she explained. “I believe I was the first black woman to win a Grammy in the pop arena, which was basically almost designated for white people, so it was kind of unheard of.”
She added, “I was probably the first person in a lot of areas.”
Warwick recently appeared on Fox’s The Masked Singer as the mouse during a legendary reveal.
