As if taken directly from one of his love ballads, their story began. When Sam Cooke and Barbara Campbell first met on Chicago’s South Side, they were both 18 years old.
A pop icon by that point, Mr. Cooke passed away fifteen years later after being slain in an ill-fated motel tryst.
Ms. Cooke lived in relative obscurity in her final years, and by her and her family’s wishes, no public statement was made upon her passing in April at the age of 85. David Washington, a Detroit radio presenter who is connected to the Cooke and Womack families, recently confirmed the death. The reason wasn’t stated.
Who is Sam Cooke’s wife Barbara Campbell?
Before getting hitched to one other in 1959 in Chicago, Barbara and Sam were previously married to and divorced from other people. The Rev. Charles Cook, the disapproving father of Mr. Cooke, officiated the ceremony.
With a Cape covered in vines in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, the couple made their home. (At the start of his career, Mr. Cooke added an “e” to his name.)
On August 10, 1935, in Chicago, Barbara Campbell and her twin sister Beverly were born. She was a student at Doolittle Elementary.
When they first met, Mr. Cooke had already completed high school, but Barbara was a teen mother who had to work two jobs to support her and her child.
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