Ringo Starr’s 1st Wife Said He Was a ‘Pushover’ With an ‘Inferiority Complex’

Ringo Starr became known as the funny Beatle, but his first wife, Maureen Starkey, saw a much more vulnerable side to the drummer. The couple married in the midst of Beatlemania and remained together until 1975. In this time, Starkey said that her husband frequently asked for reassurance about their relationship. Still, she said Starr was mostly laid back and pleasant to be around.

Ringo Starr met his 1st wife when she was a Beatles fan

Starkey lived many Beatles fans’ dreams when she went from a follower of the band to Starr’s wife. She first kissed Paul McCartney on a dare when he was leaving a concert, but she waited around to kiss Starr as well. He was her favorite Beatle. 

Several weeks later, Starr asked her to dance, and their relationship began. She was cautious to keep their romance quiet, though.

“I might have been killed otherwise,” she said, per the book The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “The other girls were not friendly at all. They wanted to stab me in the back. It was part of their image, that they weren’t married and so each girl thought she might have a chance. None of them were supposed to have steadies.”

Eventually, Starkey became pregnant, and the pair married in 1965.

Ringo Starr’s 1st wife said he was a ‘pushover’

Though Starr has an easygoing public image, Starkey said he was plagued by worries at home.

“Richy isn’t assertive at all,” Starkey told Le Chronicleur in 1988, per Express. “He’s pretty laid-back and gentle — some people could call him a pushover. He has this inferiority complex about him. I don’t know how to describe it. He just wants me to constantly reassure him that I love him because he gets afraid. We would be lying in bed and he would hold me close to him and say, ‘Do you really love me?’ I would have to constantly reassure him that I did love him, that I did care for him; and I think he was really pleased to hear me say that to him. He was so afraid that I might not love him.”

For much of their relationship, Starr was caught in the maelstrom of The Beatles’ success. Many saw him as the weakest link in the band, which likely wore on him. It’s possible that his search for reassurance stemmed from this. For the most part, though, Starkey said Starr was a good partner.

“Richy is such a cheerful, peaceful man that it’s wonderful to talk with him. He has a wonderful sense of humor and can be very charming at times,” she said. “My mother loved him when she first met him because he charmed the socks off of her. He was excellent with children —mostly because he’s usually gentle and playful. I used to comment to him that he still acted like a child, but he laughed it off.”

The couple divorced in 1975

Though she spoke about him with fondness over a decade after their divorce, Starkey and Starr’s relationship reached a rocky end. In the early 1970s, Starkey had an affair with Starr’s former bandmate, George Harrison. 

Not long after, Starr also had an affair, effectively ending their marriage. They divorced in 1975. Both went on to marry other people.