10 famous people who married their cousins

You’d be surprised at how tangled some family trees can actually get, and a few famous people ended up marrying someone who was already on theirs.

The marriage that followed him everywhere

Musician Jerry Lee Lewis married his cousin Myra Gale Brown in December 1957 when he was 22. She was only 13. To make matters worse, the pair had a family connection, as Myra’s father, J. W. Brown, was Lewis’s first cousin. That made Myra his first cousin once removed. 

J. W. was also quite close to Lewis since he played bass in Lewis’s band, so it wasn’t exactly an unknown connection. The news didn’t come to light until Lewis’s 1958 tour in Great Britain. It then became a huge scandal that Lewis never managed to make it back from.

A childhood connection became a marriage

The weird thing about Rudy Giuliani’s first marriage was that it was with someone he’d known for years. It was someone in his family. Yes, Giuliani married his second cousin, Regina Peruggi, on October 26, 1968, although it was years before he became mayor of New York City. 

The pair separated in the 1970s and divorced in 1982. The Catholic Church actually annulled the marriage later, too, long before Giuliani’s press conferences and presidential run.

Einstein kept the surname in the family

There was no need for Albert Einstein to introduce his second wife to the extended family. She was already part of it. Yes, Elsa Einstein was Albert’s first cousin through their mothers, who were sisters. They were related on their fathers’ side as well, to make things worse.

Albert married Elsa in Berlin on June 2, 1919, and it was only shortly after his divorce from Mileva Marić became final. The pair began their relationship several years earlier. Elsa actually carried the Einstein surname from birth, so she didn’t even need a name change.

Before the famous novels came along

There was a time before The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds made H. G. Wells famous. That was when he married Isabel Mary Wells. She was his cousin, and he’d spent some time living with her family while he was studying. It was technically his family, too.

They then got married on October 31, 1891, although the marriage didn’t last very long. He actually left the marriage three years later because he’d become romantically involved with Amy Catherine Robbins. She was one of his former students. He clearly wasn’t a guy who believed in limits in relationships.

The Gambino name had another family connection

You probably know Carlo Gambino for his last name. He was the leader of a major New York crime family. Turns out, his family connections went beyond that, as he married his cousin, Catherine Castellano, in 1926. She was his first cousin. 

Gambino was 24 at the time, while Catherine was 19, and she was also Paul Castellano’s sister. He was the same man who took over the crime family after Carlo died. Carlo and Catherine had four children together.

Royal family trees crossed more than once

It’s no secret that a lot of royals are related, although you might not realize how related they are. Look at Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, for example. They got married on November 20, 1947, and were both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria.

It means they were third cousins. That wasn’t the only connection, though, as their family trees crossed elsewhere too. It was pretty normal for European royal families of that era to be so closely related. Doesn’t make it any less strange, though.

Maslow went against his parents

Psychologist Abraham Maslow married his first cousin Bertha Goodman when he was 20 years old, and his parents didn’t approve of the relationship. He didn’t care, though. Yes, the man most well-known for his hierarchy of human needs did what he wanted anyway.

The couple married in December 1928 and then moved to Wisconsin. Maslow continued his university studies there and went on to earn three psychology degrees, along with a doctorate. The couple stayed together and had two daughters.

The match began inside the family

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein married Sajida Talfah in 1963. But she was already part of his family before she became his wife, as she was his first cousin. She was the daughter of his maternal uncle, and their marriage was arranged when they were young.

The two of them had five children together, and Saddam became Iraq’s president in 1979. In 1986, Saddam actually got married to another woman, despite being married to Sajida. Sajida was very angry when she found out, as you might expect, although she never divorced him.

The Roosevelts shared an ancestor

The Roosevelt family tree was a lot more like a circle than anything else. Philip James Roosevelt married Jean Schermerhorn Roosevelt on May 9, 1925, and the two were second cousins. 

Their grandfathers, James Alfred Roosevelt and Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, were brothers. Philip never ended up being a president or major political figure himself. But he was part of a family that produced Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, though.

Her second husband was already family

Charlotte Perkins Gilman had known her husband, George Houghton Gilman, since the pair were young. It makes sense because he was her first cousin. The two took a while to get married, though, as they spent about seventeen years apart before reconnecting. 

Charlotte was already a famous writer by that time, especially for her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. George worked as a New York attorney. They married on June 11, 1900, and stayed together until George’s sudden death in 1934. She never remarried.

Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.