“I am never sans Cher,” wrote Sunny Bono in his diary on the day of his 33rd birthday. “She lives inside my body….Thank God I have Cher. She’s my stabilizer. She’s my generator too. She’s my reason.” Their love may have been all too brief, but it was true, even if they were always an unlikely couple. She was 16 and an aspiring actress at the time they met in an LA coffee joint; he was 27 and working for Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood. But they became best friends, then lovers, then an inseparable pop duo known simply as “Sonny & Cher.”

On this day, October 27, as both of their stars were just beginning to rise, Sonny Bono married Cherylin Sarkisian. Together they would become the most popular male-female pop duo of the 60s and 70s.

Cher always maintained that their marriage was not brought down by personal differences. “What you saw on TV with Sonny and Cher was a good representation of our personal life, always laughing and having fun,” she wrote in one of her memoirs. It was that intense pressure of the fame they were so busy cultivating. Both went on to semi-successful solo careers, but never as much as what they were together. The Sonny & Cher act was truly greater than the sum of its parts.