Diana Ross and Berry Gordy had been in a relationship in the 60s and 70s when Diana became pregnant with their first daughter Rhonda, soon after they broke up.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on July 15, 2022. It has since been updated.
Fathers are everything for their daughters. The two share a bond that even the mothers have difficulty in understanding. Fathers who have a good relationship with their daughters help shape them into confident and strong individuals.
We grow up with the memories of our father driving us down to the candy or ice cream store where he picks us up and puts us on his shoulders. When he holds your hand in his, you know nothing bad can happen to you. But what if one day someone tells you that the man you'd grown up believing was your protector isn't actually your father?
Diana Ross is known for her legendary singing and her eldest daughter grew up with the fame of her mother. She had a perfect family growing up with her four more siblings and father Robert Silberstein. But turns out, he wasn't her father after all.
Diana Ross met Motown Records owner Berry Gordy in the 60s and by 1965, the couple had descended the road to a whirlwind romance. Even though Berry was madly in love with Diana, the couple decided to keep their relationship professional by 1971, reported Amomama. By then Diana had become pregnant with her first child Rhonda and married business executive, Robert Ellis Silberstein just two months after the breakup.
Rhonda Ross, also a singer, was 12 years old when she started noticing the physical differences between her and the other family members and started asking questions. “I started to ask my mother some questions about ‘why am I not growing?’ Because Bob, who raised me, is 6 foot something, and Berry is 5’7,” she said while talking in an interview with Fuse TV, as per Amomama.
“So, I was wondering why I wasn’t getting taller. I just had pre-teen questions about myself and my relationship to the world and that sort of thing. And so, she [Diana] sat me down one day and said, ‘here’s the deal,” she continued.
Talking about the revelation and Silberstein accepting her as her daughter she said, “The bottom line was, I looked just like [Gordy], and my sisters looked just like their father, a 6-foot-tall Jewish American man,” as per New York Post and added, “though he knew I wasn’t his when my mother was pregnant.”
Rhonda was 13 when Diana revealed to her daughter that Berry, who she called Uncle, was her father. According to her, finding out about her real father came as a big relief. "Uncle B.B" wasn't her uncle, but father. While it took time for her to figure out, her fans knew about it all along.
Talking about her experience she said, "I’d meet fans on the street who’d say, ‘Oh child, we knew you were Berry Gordy’s daughter — you look just like him!’” Berry was close to the family because Diana admired him so much that all the kids called him Uncle Berry. But Rhonda wasn't as close to him as her mother.
Recalling the days after discovering what her real relationship with Gordy was, she said, “I went to Berry and we re-started a different kind of relationship. All of these things that I knew about him sort of in a third person, he was able to talk to me about one to one,” she said and continued, “We figured it out."
After the revelation, the singer shares a beautiful relationship with both Berry and Silberstein and she addresses both of them as "dad." Her son Reif also spends time with both his grandfathers.
In 2019, Rhonda disclosed to Ray Cornelius on the UPFRONT podcast about the things she has learned from Diana and Berry's relationship over the years. She said, “I think that’s what both he and my mother have taught me, the sense of ‘belief in yourself and go for it.’ It doesn’t matter if you have never seen anyone else do it, it doesn’t matter if no else has ever done it, it doesn’t matter who doesn’t believe that you can do it.”
She also admires that both Diana and Berry have never let their past affect their present and future, a quality which has shaped them into the icons that they are today.
References:
https://news.amomama.com/149748-remember-berry-gordy-he-has-a-talented-d.html
https://www.fuse.tv/videos/2013/02/fuse-news-rhonda-ross-talks-family-diana-ross-berry-gordy
https://news.amomama.com/165659-diana-ross-daughter-rhonda-once-revealed.html
https://nypost.com/2015/05/02/how-diana-ross-daughter-learned-her-dad-was-berry-gordy/
https://www.wclk.com/post/upfront-featuring-rhonda-ross-and-more-audio
