Long before Lisa Marie Presley, there was another young woman who truly thought she would one day be his wife. She wasn’t a stranger to the spotlight either. You may well remember her from the Broadway stage.
Her name is Stephanie Mills, and in the late 1970s she and Michael were a couple. She had become a star playing Dorothy in “The Wiz” on Broadway, singing her heart out eight shows a week while she was still barely out of her teens. Michael was rising fast too, and the two of them fell for each other during those busy years.
She has never been shy about how deep her feelings ran. “I thought that I was going to be Mrs. Michael Jackson,” she said, looking back on it. She remembered him warmly too, calling him “very affectionate, very loving, very sensitive.” For a while it really felt to her like the start of a life together.
So why didn’t it last? She gave her answer in a single honest sentence, and it says a lot about the man the whole world would soon know.
Here she is telling the story in her own words.
Stephanie Mills remembers her romance with Michael
What makes her story so easy to understand is that there was no big fight and no scandal behind it. By her telling, it came down to who Michael was and what he was chasing. He had a dream that was simply bigger than any one relationship, and she could see it clearly even then.
The reason she gave is right there in the clip above. It’s a short line, but once you hear it, the whole thing makes sense. She doesn’t sound bitter about it at all. If anything she sounds proud of the young man she knew before the rest of the world claimed him.
Stephanie went on to have a long and respected career of her own in music. She has defended Michael warmly over the years, speaking up for the gentle person she remembers from those early days rather than the headlines that came later.
It’s a sweet piece of history that a lot of fans have never heard. Two young stars, both on the way up, both sure of each other for a while.
Give the interview a listen and you’ll hear exactly how she explains the ending, in her own voice.