Ike Turner was married 13 times?

[Little_Nemo]

The current issue of Blender mentions in passing that Ike Turner was married at least 13 times. I was amazed I had never heard this before. But when I tried to verify it online I couldn’t find any of his supposed marriages mentioned except his most famous one to Tina. Did Ike really have 13 wives or was Blender whooshing me?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Oddly, Ike may never have been married to Tina.

Spotlight: Ike Turner

He found the look and sound in a teenager named Anna Mae Bullock from Nutbush, Tenn.

Renaming her, Turner restyled the young woman’s look and integrated her into his band. In 1959, the Ike & Tina Turner Revue was born. Their pairing was never a formal marriage, but as Ike says in his 1999 autobiography, Taking Back My Name, “We didn’t recognize marriages.” What he says is true by the rural Southern standards of the times – a good thing, because he formed a number of similar alliances with women.