The death of a child can put a strain on most relationships and marriages and perhaps was the root of Mayte Garcia and the late Prince Rogers Nelson’s split in the 1990s.
The teen dancer-turned first wife of the pop icon who died last Thursday, April 21 told People magazine upon hearing the news of the death that he is “with our son now.”
The couple married in 1996 when she was 22 and he was 37 and a year later welcomed a son they named Boy Gregory. Sadly, the newborn passed away a week later from a rare birth defect called Pfeiffer Syndrome. Garcia later suffered a miscarriage after that loss.
The two divorced in 2000, shortly after the loss of their expected children and reports indicate that impending strife over the loss led to the demise of their marriage.
In a statement to PEOPLE magazine after Prince’s death, Garcia, who appeared on the VH1 reality TV show Hollywood Exes, said, “I can’t even think of the words of what I’m feeling. This man was my everything, we had a family. I am beyond deeply saddened and devastated.”
“To lose two babies is really scary… it really caught on me emotionally, physically, everything. It took me at least 15 years to get over it and still, to this day, I miss my son. I believe a child dying between a couple either makes you stronger or it doesn’t. For me, it was very, very hard to move forward and for us as a couple I think it probably broke us,” she said in an interview in 2012.
Prince later married our Bellyitch Bumpwatch alum Manuela Testolini in 2001 before divorcing five years later in 2006. Testolini has two children with Halle Berry’s ex-husband singer-songwriter Eric Benet.
This photo from our feature on her was one of our most pinned images on Pinterest ever.
photo: Getty, Instagram