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David Bowie was mostly an enigma. When we thought we knew him, he’d go and say something that confused us even more. His music was just as thought-provoking.

However, Bowie was pretty clear about his relationship with his first wife, Angie Bowie.

David Bowie and his first wife, Angie, at an American Film Institute event in 1975.
David Bowie and his first wife, Angie | Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

David Bowie met his first wife, Angie, because they were both dating the same man

During an interview with Playboy, Bowie talked about his relationship with his then-wife, Angie Bowie. Playboy brought her up, asking Bowie, “Didn’t your wife, Angela, have something to do with getting you your first recording contract?”

Bowie replied that he met his wife because they were dating the same man. He said, “Angela and I knew each other because we were both going out with the same man. Another one of her boyfriends, a talent scout for Mercury Records, took her to a show at The Roundhouse, where I happened to be playing.

“He hated me. She thought I was great. Ultimately, she threatened to leave him if he didn’t sign me. So he signed me.”

Playboy asked, “And how was the situation with your mutual boyfriend resolved?” The “Let’s Dance” singer replied, “I married Angela and we both continued to see him.”

However, the reason why Bowie married Angie is even more interesting.

Bowie married his first wife because she was the only person he could stand

Playboy asked Bowie why he married Angie. Bowie replied that she was the only person he could stand to live with for more than a week.

“Because I realized that she’d be one of the very few women I’d be capable of living with for more than a week,” Bowie said. “She is remarkably pleasant to keep coming back to. And, for me, she always will be.

“There’s nobody more demanding than me. Not physically, necessarily, but mentally. I’m very strenuous. Very intense about anything I do. I scare away most people I’ve lived with.”

However, Bowie wasn’t in love with her. “Never have been in love, to speak of,” he said. “I was in love once, maybe, and it was an awful experience. It rotted me, drained me, and it was a disease.

“Hateful thing, it was. Being in love is something that breeds brute anger and jealousy, everything but love, it seems. It’s a bit like Christianity–or any religion, for that matter.”

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Angie said she and Bowie got married so she could work

There definitely wasn’t love between the couple when they walked down the aisle. According to Express, Angie said the only reason she and Bowie got married was so she could obtain a work permit.

“I didn’t think it would last and David said, before we got married, ‘I’m not really in love with you’ and I thought that’s probably a good thing.

“Then I think he fell in love with me because he got really mad when we broke up and he behaved like a b****y queen.”

Angie gave birth to the couple’s son, Duncan, in 1971. However, Bowie and his first wife couldn’t make things work and eventually separated in 1980. In 1992, Bowie married his second wife, Somali model Iman. They had their daughter Alexandria “Lexi” in 2000.

So, while Bowie told Playboy he’d never been in love before, he clearly loved Iman and his children more than anything in the world.