Will there ever be a day when we see Ozzy Osbourne and don't think of the time the Prince of Darkness shouted for his wife, "Sharonnnn!" on their reality TV show? Not likely. Just like we'll never unsee the image of him biting the head off of a bat on stage.
Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne are one of our favorite couples ever. They are like the darker and more dysfunctional Paul and Linda McCartney, but through their equally crazy antics, they've stayed by each other through the good and the really bad for an astounding 38 years. They've literally almost killed each other, and they're still together. Honestly, there's really nothing that can come between them or ruin their marriage. That's wacky and iconic at the same time.
So we feel a little confused and blurry-eyed (just like Ozzy) when we learn that Ozzy was married before this match made in hell was even a thought. In the Godfather of Heavy Metal's (personally he hates the term) early career, a year after his little band called Black Sabbath released their first two albums Black Sabbath and Paranoid in 1970, he married his first wife, Thelma Riley.
We've probably never heard of Riley simply because Sharon and Ozzy's relationship eclipsed her time with Ozzy; she's probably okay with that. But that doesn't mean she didn't play an integral part in Ozzy's life and early career.
Ozzy Met Riley In His Hometown
If we are to believe Ozzy's memory, the rockstar (unsurprisingly) met his first wife at a nightclub called The Rum Runner, where Riley worked in his hometown of Birmingham, England, in 1971. They entered into a whirlwind romance (also unsurprisingly) and married that same year from that first meeting.
Riley had a son, Elliot Kingsley, from a previous marriage, but Ozzy adopted him. They didn't wait long to have their own kids, however. A year after marrying, they welcomed their daughter Jessica in 1972 and their son, Louis, in 1975.
But just because they had kids does not mean they were settling down. These early years in Ozzy's career were some of his craziest, and his drug and alcohol addictions were out of control. He was either in the studio churning out albums or on the road wreaking havoc on every hotel, venue, and pretty much anywhere he breathed, across the world.
This was not the sort of family life Riley was probably expecting. Ozzy himself referred to the marriage as a "terrible mistake" in his 2009 autobiography, I Am Ozzy. During the 2011 documentary, God Bless Ozzy Osbourne, which was produced by Ozzy's son Jack, Ozzy had a hard time even remembering the years his first two kids were born.
Both Louis and Jessica spoke about how terrible a father Ozzy was in the documentary. They said he was both physically and emotionally vacant towards them.
"I must have been a horrendous step-dad," he wrote in I Am Ozzy. "And if I loved Thelma, I certainly didn’t treat her like I did. If I’ve got any regrets about my life, that’s one of them … She didn’t deserve it: she wasn’t a bad person, and she wasn’t a bad wife."
Unfortunately, things started to get bad for Ozzy in the late '70s. His addiction and crazy antics eventually got him fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, and his marriage started to dissolve (if it was ever a marriage, to begin with).
Fortunately, the rockstar started a successful solo career in 1980, largely thanks to all Sharon's hard work. She and Ozzy had been acquaintances throughout Ozzy's Black Sabbath days since her father Don Arden was Black Sabbath's manager. When Ozzy left, she came with him as his manager.
Two years later, Ozzy divorced Riley. So Sharon not only picked Ozzy up out of the ashes of a failed career but also a failed marriage. They married the same year that Ozzy's divorce was finalized, and then they both set to work, returning Ozzy to his former glory.
The same year as Ozzy's successful album, Bark at the Moon, was released in 1983, Sharon and Ozzy welcomed their first child, Aimee, then Kelly, in 1984, and Jack, in 1985.
What Happened To Riley?
Some sources say that Riley retreated from the public eye and worked as a school teacher in Leicestershire, England. But other than that, we don't really know much about her life since booking it from Ozzy.
In hindsight, Riley's marriage was extremely low-key compared to Sharon and Ozzy's, and she's probably glad she got out when she did. Look at all the things that Sharon and Ozzy have gone through.
There was the time in 1989 when he was arrested for nearly killing Sharon, the time when Ozzy relapsed in 2013, and the time in 2016 when Ozzy revealed that Ozzy had had a four-year-long affair with celebrity hair colorist Michelle Pugh, from 2011 to 2015. That last one resulted in the couple's split for a time...but the scandal, along with all the others over the decades, did nothing to dent their marriage.
So it seems as if Ozzy finally met his soul mate, even if the couple bicker and want to kill each other (literally) sometimes. At the end of the day, the Osbourne's will always be family through every major catastrophe, scandal, and heartbreak. It's like they have a blood pact or something. We wouldn't be surprised if they did.