Dionne Warwick regretted her decision to marry William Elliott just three days after the wedding. “I just woke up and knew I had made a huge mistake,” she detailed in “My Life As I See It.” “I realized that my flexible freedom of coming and going, which I was accustomed to, would no longer exist.” She knew she wanted to divorce Elliott and wanted it done fast to prevent things from deteriorating. She got on a plane to Texas and then on a bus to Juárez, and within three hours had her Mexican divorce papers in hand.
The divorce was finalized in the U.S. in May 1967. But even if Warwick didn’t feel ready to settle down, that doesn’t mean she didn’t have feelings for Elliott. The couple got back together shortly after divorcing and exchanged vows a second time just four months later, in September 1967. Their second attempt worked better, producing two sons, David and Damon. But it wasn’t going to last. In 1975, Warwick and Elliott divorced a second time.
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The reasons this time were a bit more complicated. Warwick’s growing success and fame became an issue in the marriage. “I was the major earning power in the family and that is very difficult for the male ego,” she told The Guardian in 2020. “It just got too much to bear for my husband, and we decided that it would be best for us to part ways.”
