How Iman Met David Bowie: The Model Says Their Love ‘Was Predestined’
Iman rarely talks about her late husband, music legend David Bowie. But in a recent interview, the supermodel opened up about their enduring love story, sharing the surprising way they met and fell in love.
David Bowie and Iman’s love story began with a blind date
During an Apr. 27 appearance on fellow model Naomi Campbell’s YouTube show No Filter with Naomi, Iman got candid about her romance with Bowie.
According to the supermodel, she and Bowie first met on a blind date, which neither she nor the rockstar had any idea they were on.
“I moved to LA, and while I was in LA, I met David. And it was a blind date, we were really set up,” the catwalk queen recalled. “I met this hairdresser at a photographer’s dinner one night, and he said, ‘I’d like you to come to my birthday party.’ And it was at a restaurant, so I thought it was a birthday party. And it was four of us. David, the hairdresser, and the boyfriend, and me.”
She continued, “The hairdresser was David’s hairdresser, but David didn’t even know. David was told also it was a birthday dinner. And that’s how I met him. And it was 29 years ago. It’s literally when people say do you believe in destiny? Yup. Yeah, this could not have happened… I truly in my heart feel it was predestined.”
Iman and David Bowie had an enduring romance
In 2000, Bowie opened up about his first meeting with Iman, saying that it was love at first sight for him.
“My attraction to her was immediate and all-encompassing,” he said during an interview with Hello! magazine. “I couldn’t sleep for the excitement of our first date. That she would be my wife, in my head, was a done deal. I’d never gone after anything…with such passion in all my life.”
After two years of dating, Bowie and Iman tied the knot during a private ceremony in Switzerland on Apr. 24, 1992. Two months later, the couple solemnized their union in Florence, Italy.
“It rained!” Iman recalled in 2012 of their nuptials, per Biography. “They said, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t complain, you’re going to be married for 50 years, it’s going to be happy.’ And they were right.”
The couple went on to have one child together — a daughter, Alexandria “Lexi” Zahra Jones.
Though they kept much of their relationship to themselves, Iman and Bowie had an enduring romance that was captured whenever they step foot in the public eye.
From staring lovingly at each other while attending red carpet events to speaking highly of their relationship during interviews, the couple’s love was just as beautiful as the life they shared together.
The pair remained in a loving and committed relationship until Bowie shockingly died of liver cancer at the age of 69 in 2016.
Iman vowed to never remarry after David Bowie’s death
Two years after Bowie’s death, Iman opened up about her life without him in an interview with Net-A-Porter magazine.
“Sometimes, I don’t want people to know how sad I am,” the supermodel shared. “People say to me, ‘Oh, you’re so strong.’ I’m not strong — I am just trying to keep it together.”
When asked if she would ever consider entering into another romantic relationship, the fashion icon recently made it clear that her heart will forever belong to Bowie.
“David is in our hearts and minds on a daily basis, for all of us. You know, this was my true love,” she told Harper’s Bazaar UK in January 2021. “My daughter once asked me if I would ever marry again and I said, ‘Never.'”
She continued, “It was a really everyday marriage. He was a very funny, warm gentleman – you know, everyone talks about him being futuristic, but no, he was not, he liked more than anything to wear a three-piece suit. It was a beautiful, ordinary life and that was what was great about it.
“We could live in New York, pick up our daughter from school, walk everywhere,” Iman said before lamenting, “I wish we had had more years.”
