Can You Feel the Love Tonight? Get to Know 'Rocketman' Elton John's Husband, David Furnish
Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Elton John keeps a busy recording and touring schedule in no small part thanks to the support of his husband, David Furnish. The couple have been together since 1993 and had an instant connection.
“I was attracted to David immediately,” John told Parade in 2010. “He had a real job, his own apartment, a car. He was independent. I didn’t need to take care of him. I thought, ‘God, this is new territory for me—someone wants to be with me just because he likes me.’ I knew he was the one because he is not afraid of me."
The couple married in 2014, nine years after entering into a civil partnership. All these years later, the pair keep their relationship fresh by communicating and expressing gestures of love.
“Every Saturday for 16 years, we’ve sent each other a card, no matter where we are in the world, to say how much we love each other," John told Parade. “We’ve never been jealous."
Here's everything you need to know about Elton John's husband, David Furnish.
Related: Why Elton John Did Not Accept the Grammy That Made Him an EGOT
Who is Elton John's husband David Furnish?
Furnish is Canadian and has a background in advertising—he worked for the major agency Ogilvy & Mather—as well as journalism, having written for GQ and Tatler. For good measure, Furnish also serves on the board of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, and he and John are co-executives of the latter's long-running film company, Rocket Pictures.
Furnish's filmmaking CV is quite impressive. He directed the 1997 documentary Elton John: Tantrums & Tiaras, executive produced 2014's Billy Elliot the Musical Live and produced the 2011 animated film Gnomeo & Juliet. Furnish also co-produced his husband's hit 2019 biopic Rocketman.
John and Furnish are among the executive producers of the four-part documentary series Better Angels: The Gospel According to Tammy Faye, which debuted at Sundance in 2024.
Although the couple's work and personal lives are intertwined, Furnish is careful about keeping his own interests and career going.
“It’s very important in any relationship that one partner doesn’t lose themselves in the other, and that’s very easy if you’re involved with a celebrity,” he told The Guardian in 2001. “They get so much attention and so much deference anyway, it would be very easy to just get swept up into being their other half. But the person that Elton fell in love with—well, I had my own career, my own identity. The worst thing I could do was sacrifice that.”
How did Elton John meet his husband David Furnish?
John and Furnish met at a dinner party.
“In 1993, I went back to my house in Windsor for a while," John told Parade in 2010. "I wanted to meet new people so I rang up a friend in London and said, ‘Could you please rattle some new people together for dinner here Saturday?’” One of those guests was Furnish, who "was very well dressed, very shy," the musician added. "The next night we had dinner. After it, we consummated our relationship. We fell in love very quickly.”
Related: Is Candle In the Wind Really About Marilyn Monroe? The Real Stories Behind Classic Elton John Songs
When did Elton John get married to David Furnish?
John and Furnish first entered into a civil partnership on December 21, 2005, holding a low-key ceremony in front of just a few people. However, when same-sex marriage became legal in England in 2014, the couple decided to get married right away.
"For this legislation to come through is joyous, and we should celebrate it," John told the BBC. "We shouldn't just say, 'Oh, well, we have a civil partnership. We're not going to bother to get married.' We will get married."
He added that civil partnerships were massively important historically, however.
"Having our civil partnership was an incredible breakthrough for people that have campaigned for a long time—through the '60s and the '50s in England when it was so hard to be gay and hard to be open about it. And it was a criminal act."
Nine years to the day of the civil partnership—December 21, 2014—the couple tied the knot at their Windsor estate in Berkshire. Guests included fellow musicians and celebrities, including Ed Sheeran, Hugh Grant, David and Victoria Beckham, and Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. The day featured personal touches such as bouquets of red roses and spawned an outpouring of love and well wishes.
“We're utterly overwhelmed by and overjoyed by all the kind messages of support we've received from people around the world," John wrote on Instagram after the ceremony. "Massive thanks to everyone from the bottom of our hearts! We're grateful and privileged to live in a country where it isn't illegal to be gay and where marriage equality is a reality."
Does Elton John have kids with husband David Furnish?
John and Furnish have two kids together, born via a surrogate. Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John arrived on Christmas day in 2010, while Elijah Joseph Daniel Furnish-John was born in January 2013.
"It was a life-changing experience, having children — and in the best way possible," John said in a 2018 interview with the Grammys. "I never thought in a million years I'd ever be a father. I didn't have the right temperament to be a father, the right job to be a father, and it's proved opposite. I love every single minute of it. I just love being a dad. I love them so much."
How many times has Elton John been married?
John has been married twice. He was married to studio engineer Renate Blauel for several years in the '80s. The couple's 1984 wedding was a lavish affair that took place in Sydney, Australia. At the time, UPI reported the ceremony featured delicacies imported from New Zealand—3,000 roses and hundreds of white orchids—and a menu that included seafood, meat and vintage wine.
When John and Blauel were married, the musician was already openly bisexual, although the Sydney Morning Telegraph reportedly quoted Blauel as being excited about the nuptials: "He's the nicest guy I've ever met ... I've heard all sorts of stories about Elton and that he's supposed to be bisexual, but that doesn't worry me. I'm just feeling fabulous."
Harley Medcalf, the managing director of Duet Entertainment and John’s then-tour promoter, echoed the good vibes to Page Six years later: “All I can say, watching them standing together at the wedding, holding hands, there was magic there.”
Who is Elton John's ex-wife?
Blauel was a studio technician and engineer whose credits include work on Marvin Gaye's 1981 album In Our Lifetime and Duran Duran's 1982 album Rio, as well as on records by The Who's Pete Townshend, Stephen Bishop and Chris Rea. In fact, John and Blauel actually met in the studio, when he was working on a song for Kiki Dee at London’s AIR Studios. Blauel later worked on John's 1984 album Breaking Hearts.
The pair clearly bonded over other pursuits beyond music. Speaking to Page Six, comedian Barry Humphries noted that at a 1983 lunch, he noticed the couple were “affectionately connected" and added, "[Blauel] was introduced to me as Elton’s girlfriend. She was very attractive and nice. We talked mostly about art at lunch, and not much about music.”
Why did Elton John get divorced?
John and Blauel divorced in 1988, after four years of marriage. The split came about for a few reasons, he told The Los Angeles Times in 1992.
"Even though I knew I was gay, I thought this woman was attractive and that being married would cure me of everything wrong in my life ... When you take that amount [of drugs and alcohol], you can’t have any relationship.”
Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald years later, he reiterated, “A drug addict thinks like this: ‘I’ve had enough boyfriends and that’s not made me happy, so I’ll have a wife; that will change everything.’ And I loved Renate. She’s a great girl. I really, really loved her. But, you know. It is one of the things I regret most in my life, hurting her.”
Over the years, John's relationship with Blauel has been up and down. In 1997's Elton John: Tantrums & Tiaras, John noted that he hoped "one day that we can meet and be friends,” because the pair "haven’t been in touch. We’ve had no contact at all which is very sad, but she wants it that way. I don’t have any negative things to say about her at all."
In 2007, he told the Sydney Morning Herald the two had reconciled. Over the years, he's said nothing but lovely things about her, at one point noting, "She was the classiest woman I’ve ever met, but it wasn’t meant to be. I was living a lie."
Even bumps along the way were settled with class, however. In 2020, the BBC reported the pair "amicably" settled litigation over how their marriage was depicted in the biopic Rocketman and John's memoir.
Next, get to know the "best friend" who Queen's Freddie Mercury lovingly called his wife.
