2023-09-11 08:54:31
Musician Peter Maffay has confirmed that he has married his partner Hendrikje Balsmeyer. “Yes it’s right. Hendrikje and I are married and have been a happy couple for a long time,” Maffay told the “Bild” newspaper. Accordingly, the couple secretly married a year and a half ago, in April 2022. This is the fifth marriage for the 74-year-old Maffay; the singer has a small daughter with the teacher, who is almost 40 years his junior.
The couple met at a concert in October 2015. Maffay discovered Balsmeyer in the audience and brought her on stage. “I look from the stage fifty meters into the eyes of my listeners and can see whether I am reaching them with my songs,” Maffay told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin” in March 2016. He sees fear, happiness, hope. “In Hendrikje’s eyes I saw reflected exactly the feeling I sang about in this song: endless longing.” In such rare moments “a kind of magical agreement” takes place.
Their daughter Anouk was born in November 2018. Last year, the parents also published a children’s book together, which they dedicated to their daughter.
“You don’t have to get married to be happy”
In the summer of 2021, Maffay and Balsmeyer still spoke hesitantly about getting married. “You don’t have to get married to be happy. “Especially since a wedding is no guarantee of love and happiness,” Balsmeyer told the magazine “Bunte” in an interview at the time. “I can confirm that,” Maffay added. “I’ve been married four times. However, this fact would not be an obstacle for me to marry Hendrikje.”
The fact that the two became a couple came with a few hurdles. When they met, Maffay was newly married to his fourth wife, Tanja. “It’s a fact – a beautiful one on the one hand, and admittedly a sad one on the other, because there’s always someone who is suffering,” explained the singer in an interview with Radio 7 in Ulm in December 2015. “I know that what we are going through together right now is complicated, but it is fine in itself – more than that – and that is why I stand 100 percent behind what I do and can walk tall and everyone who does concerns, too. I’m definitely not going to give in.”
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He also dealt openly with the situation in other interviews. “We decided to stay together. Even though we know that there are some broken pieces left and right,” Maffay told “Bild”. “When something like this happens, you can’t go through life with a lie. That would be unfair to everyone else.”
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