We all remember when Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. were with one of the hottest R&B groups of the 60’s and 70’s, 5th Dimension, with hits like “Wedding Bell Blues” and “One Less Bell To Answer.” We also remember them breaking away from the group and giving us classic jams like “You Don’t Have To Be A Star (To Be In My Show)” and “Saving All My Love” (later recorded by Whitney Houston). Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis were the truth!
They successfully defied the odds of the typically short lived celebrity marriages and have now been married for 40+ years…they even wrote a book about it titled, Up Up and Away. What they need to do though, is also write a book about how to age slower than the average, especially Marilyn, because she looks like she hasn’t aged much since her Solid Gold days and Billy ain’t looking too shabby either. Check them out below…
See what we mean?!! Above, is a NEW pic of 74 year old Marilyn McCoo (yep I said 74) and Billy Davis Jr. is 79! They would probably make a heck of a profit on that anti-aging book.
Alright now that we’ve gotten over our initial shock, let’s talk about what they’re doing now. You would think that after about 60 years in the music game (about 50 for Marilyn and 60 for Billy), that they would be kicking their feet up, relaxing by a poolside, sipping martinis and lemonade in the shade, but nuh-uh, Marilyn and Billy are still going strong! As a matter of fact, they’ve been touring.
In addition to performing, Billy has battled prostate cancer. In the video below, he and Marilyn talked about the importance of health checks and how difficult it was for Billy to deal with the reality of his cancer diagnosis initially…
In case you’ve ever wondered why Billy and Marilyn left such a successful group, like The 5th Dimension, it wasn’t because of any tension among the members or anything, but Marilyn and Billy explained that they simply didn’t want to live their lives with regrets of what could have been, so they followed their hearts and took a shot at becoming a duo. They said this about their decision to venture out on their own:
“We didn’t know exactly what was going to happen,” recalls Davis.
“We knew we had walked away from a lot of success and it was very risky, but we didn’t want to look back on our lives 20 years later and say, ‘Wow, we always wanted to do this or that,’ so we looked at it as giving it a shot,” adds Marilyn. At first, their record company offered each of them recording contracts. “We went back to them and asked about ‘how about doing this as a duo’ so it wouldn’t impact our marriage. … We knew it was a totally new venture. We knew as big as we had become in The 5th Dimension, we could never expect that lightning could strike twice in the same place.” But it did, and what a storm it was.
[via SoulTrain]
Marilyn and Billy are truly an inspiration. They’re another example that it is not only possible to love your partner, after so many decades together, but that it’s also possible to still be in love with your partner as well. They’re like the music version of Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. We look forward to seeing them on that stage for many more years to come.
