Debbie Rowe is the mother of two of Michael Jackson's children.
You don't hear much about her these days, but back in the mid-90s everyone knew her
name.Their bizarre relationship captivated the world for a time, but then she disappeared.
Curious about whatever happened to Debbie Rowe?
Let's explore.
According to ABC News, Debbie Rowe first met the "King of Pop" when she worked as a nursing
assistant for a Beverly Hills dermatologist.
Rowe revealed the details of their initial encounter during a 2003 interview, recalling,
"I said, 'You know what?
Nobody does what you do better, and nobody does what I do better.
Let's get this over with.'
And he laughed, and we just became friends.
It was just right away."
Rowe was a huge fan of Michael Jackson's music and of the man himself.
And it seems Jackson really valued Rowe's friendship, confiding in her when his marriage
to Lisa Marie Presley started to fail.
According to Rowe, Jackson wanted very much to be a dad.
It was at that point that Rowe offered to willingly carry his child.
The offer was confirmed by Jackson's ex-wife Presley, who told Playboy,
"I knew Debbie Rowe was offering to [carry his child] while we were married, according
to him.
She was a nurse who had a crush on him and offered to have his babies."
The plan was that Rowe would carry Jackson's child, thus allowing him to be somewhat of
a single father.
However, his plans went awry thanks to a friend of Rowe's who secretly recorded their conversations
and sold the information to the tabloids.
According to the book, Michael Jackson: The Magic, The Madness, The Whole Story, 1958-2009,
the shocking revelation of Rowe's pregnancy caught the attention of Jackson's mother.
Katherine Jackson was strongly opposed to her grandchild being born out of wedlock.
To appease his conservative mother, Michael agreed to marry Debbie.
When Debbie revealed the situation to friend Tanya Boyd, Tanya asked Debbie if she felt
any romantic love for Michael.
Debbie answered that her love with Jackson was bigger and more important than romantic
love.
It was clear that Debbie was more than a little star-struck when she said yes to the father
of children Prince Michael Jackson and Paris Katherine Jackson, both of whom were conceived
through artificial insemination.
"We're really regular, a regular couple.
Regular parents."
She eventually gave up custody rights to her children following the divorce.
The circumstances of Debbie Rowe's connection to Michael Jackson made her a prime target
for tabloid fodder, as many in the press assumed Rowe's ultimate goal was a hefty payday.
Rowe, however, repeatedly denied the allegations.
Six months after the birth of daughter Paris Jackson, Debbie agreed to a divorce and a
multi-million dollar settlement.
Although she insisted to the press that she did have access to the children, she was later
forced to admit during Jackon's child molestation cases that she hadn't seen her two children
in years.
The entire matter made it seem as if the pregnancies were little more than a transaction for financial
gain, which is another claim Rowe has staunchly denied.
What seemed to hurt Debbie more than any claims by the press was the reality that she couldn't
give Michael what he wanted, more children.
Rowe went on to say in an in interview:
"I had so many problems when I was pregnant with Paris.
After that I couldn't have any more children.
Michael was upset about that, he couldn't understand it.
He wanted more babies."
The King of Pop's sudden passing from cardiac arrest in June of 2009 shocked the world.
"And I just wanted to say I love him, so much."
The shady circumstances surrounding his death would remain a hot topic for years to come.
Jackson's former physician Dr. Conrad Murray filled countless column inches in the weeks
and months following the bombshell news, but he wasn't the only person the press took an
interest in.
Debbie Rowe had her lawyer respond with a strongly worded statement when TMZ claimed
that she wasn't the biological mother of Prince and Paris.
Rowe's legal rep Marta Almli was quick to hit back when the story broke, telling Access
Hollywood that the vast majority of what was being said was totally untrue.
Almi went on to state in the press that Rowe was indeed the biological mother of Jackson'
two oldest children.
When Rowe took the stand during Michael Jackson's wrongful death suit in 2013, she revealed
that she was closer to Paris than she was with her son, Prince Michael Jackson.
Rowe and Paris have been spotted together on numerous occasions in the years since.
However, Debbie was a total stranger to Paris during her pre-teen years.
Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2017, Paris revealed that her mom simply didn't exist when she
was very young.
Then when she got a little older, and realized that a man can't give birth, she asked Jackson
about her mother.
He told her Debbie's name, but that was it.
Paris didn't do anything with this information until her dad passed away, at which point
she hit the internet to find out all she could about Debbie.
She was 13 years old by the time she and Rowe reunited.
In 2014, Debbie Rowe reportedly tried getting custody of her daughter Paris.
However, sources say she abandoned the plan when she realized her then teenage daughter
was in good hands with Michael Jackson's mother, Katherine Jackson.
But this wasn't the first time Debbie attempted to gain parental control of the kids only
to back out later.
She reportedly accepted a payoff of $8 million, plus $900,000 annually, after giving birth
to the first of Michael's kids.
Rowe was said to have been negotiating a further $4 million to back off after the singer's
death in 2009, a claim her reps denied to ABC News.
Debbie settled the custody scuffle a few weeks later in an agreement that did not involve
any financial payments, according to CNN.
In some leaked emails obtained by Extra, however, Debbie appeared to tell a friend at the time
that she wasn't really interested in being a full time mom.
Debbie reportedly wrote,
"Do I want the kids?
Hell no...Does it look good for me to ask for them?
Absolutely."
Michael Jackson's past was under examination once again in 2019 when HBO released the two-part
documentary Leaving Neverland.
The hard-to-watch doc contains candid interviews with Wade Robson and James Safechuck, two
men who say they were repeatedly abused by Jackson as children.
Jackson's family called Robson and Safechuk, quote, "perjurers," and in a statement, denounced
Leaving Neverland for encouraging a, quote, "public lynching."
Debbie Rowe kept unusually quiet, unusual because she's always been the first to defend
the King of Pop from accusations of child molestation.
When Martin Bashir's explosive documentary Living with Michael Jackson aired in early
2003, the singer's lawyers accused the British journalist of implying that Jackson had behaved
inappropriately around children.
Jackson felt utterly betrayed by Bashir's portrayal of him in the doc, and hit back
with a TV rebuttal.
Rowe was interviewed at length as part of the program, and she insisted that Jackson
would never harm a child.
"What's the problem?
C'mon I'll take you home."
Rowe went on to say in the interview,
"I'm tired of hearing it...Because you can only take the lies for so long and I've reached
my limit.
And that's why I'm doing this.
I'm tired of the lies."
In the footage, which was later released as a one-off special under the title The Debbie
Rowe Interview: The Missing Tapes, she was asked if she felt comfortable with Jackson
being left alone with their children.
Rowe fired back,
"He's their father, and he's not a pedophile."
Michael Jackson and Debbie Rowe split after three years of marriage, but the latter was
apparently in no rush to move on.
It wasn't until 2014 that she found love again, five years on from Jackson's death and fifteen
years after she and the King of Pop divorced.
The fact that Rowe moved on after all that time wasn't surprising, but what was shocking
was the identity of her new partner, the man she intended to marry was Marc Schaffel, former
videographer at Neverland Ranch and a one-time member of Michael Jackson's inner circle.
After the couple announced the engagement, Schaffel told Entertainment Tonight,
"We're best friends...I was the only one, actually, after Debbie and Michael had split
up, that was still allowed to talk to Debbie."
Rowe went on to say that Jackson would have approved of their union, but some people have
questioned that claim.
When news of the engagement broke, RadarOnline did some digging into Schaffel's past and
discovered that, while they were once close, this apparently wasn't the case when Jackson
died.
The two men are said to have fallen out when it was revealed that Schaffel had been directing
adult movies.
Schaffel went on to explain,
"It's no secret that my background is in the adult film business...I don't keep anything
in my life hidden."
In July 2016, Rowe opened up about her breast cancer diagnosis during an interview with
Entertainment Tonight, revealing she had a tumor removed and had started a course of
chemotherapy.
A few weeks before the interview, Jackson shared a picture of herself kissing her mom's
bald head.
Rowe's hair started dropping out after her very first chemo session.
Rowe told Entertainment Tonight,
"[Paris is] my rock...She's amazing.
She's been with me the whole time.
First phone call.
Took her 30 seconds [to reach out] when she found out.
She said, 'Are you okay?'
And I said, 'Yeah, I got this.'
She said, 'I know you do mom.'"
Rowe decided to get ahead of the curve and shave her head when the first clumps of hair
started coming out, opting for a blonde wig that she nicknamed Ursula.
Rowe went on to add,
"Chemo does its best to make you lose your femininity...And what a lot of people don't
realize is that when I take [the wig] off, I'm still me.
I'm still feminine, I'm still a woman, and above all I'm still a human."
The silver lining was that it brought her family closer together.
Even her son, Prince Michael, was giving updates on her cancer battle.
Rowe completed her chemo in January 2017.
Debbie Rowe was photographed out with friends in July 2018, two years on from her breast
cancer diagnosis.
There had been no word on whether the chemotherapy had worked at that stage, but RadarOnline
was happy to report that Paris and Prince Michael Jackson's mom was looking a lot healthier
as she caught up with gal pals in Palmdale, California.
The following year, Debbie gave the same outlet an exclusive interview, confirming that her
cancer was in remission.
Debbie enjoys living the cowboy life.
She left Los Angeles behind for a horse ranch situated in a stretch of Californian desert
between Palmdale and Lancaster.
She owns and operates the Painted Desert Ranch, which is about an hour from Paris' place in
Hollywood.
The model has visited her mom at the ranch plenty of times, according to Debbie, who
revealed that Paris was focusing a lot on her music.
Paris performs with her boyfriend, Gabriel Glenn, under the name The Soundflowers.
Debbie called Glenn a quote, "lovely boy."
She was also spotted rubbing shoulders with the likes of Chris Brown as she took in a
Soundflowers gig at an intimate venue called The Mint in 2019.
It's been a rocky road for Debbie Rowe since she became famous all those years ago, but
it's like she told Entertainment Tonight during her brave cancer battle:
"I'm a fighter and always have been."
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