Inside Alice Cooper and wife Sheryl's 50 year love story - from first meeting to hotel date nights

"Neither of us were looking to be married, not at all," Sheryl told HELLO! "I was 19 and he was 27, and we had different trajectories, but when you know when you know. For me there was no living without him. I couldn't picture my life without him, and so it wasn't even a question."

It was 1975 when Alice and his band were rehearsing for a world tour that would be staged as a Broadway show, and they needed four classically trained dancers.

"I know nothing about rock and roll," said Sheryl. 

"I knew the Beatles, and that was about it. I was on the fast track to becoming a professional ballerina, and I was coming out of my third class on this day, and all these girls in the studio getting ready with eyelashes and makeup and their headbands matched their leg warmers. 

"I said, 'What's happening?' And they said, 'Are you serious? Are you the only dancer in Los Angeles that doesn't know that Alice Cooper is having an audition? He's looking for two female dancers, highly trained, a United States tour, world tour, television special, a movie. This is an 18-month contract.' 

"And my response was, 'Alice Cooper? Who's she?'"

Alice had nothing to do with the hiring process, and first met Sheryl during rehearsals, where he asked her to help him stretch.

"When he first walked in the room, let me tell you what he looked like," said Sheryl.

"Tanner than tan, icy blue husky eyes, dark hair, had that Fred Astaire swagger, and I thought, 'This might be the most attractive man I've ever seen.' He had to adhere to choreography, and asked: 'Should I stretch? Should I maybe warm up?' 

"I managed to get him into a position where men don't stretch very well – and I hurt him! First time I touched him… it was enough to make him jump up, put two fingers in my face, and he said, 'You are dangerous. You stay away from me.' That's how we started!"

Alice added: "I was pretty much panic-stricken about the whole idea. There is something that just draws you [to someone]. You don't know why you're attracted, but you are, and the last thing on my mind was marriage. But I knew that she was going to be my wife."

After less than a year, Alice proposed – and in classic Alice fashion, it was not at all traditional.

"I'm going to tell it like this – it was a scene out of Psycho," joked Sheryl. The dancer had been contracted to perform at Super Night at the Super Bowl, and had rented an apartment to which Alice obtained the key.

"I'm in the shower, and he had come into the bathroom as I'm in the shower. I had wrapped a towel around myself, my hair up in a big white towel turban, pulled back the shower curtain, and he is sitting there on the toilet, fully clothed, lid down, looking very depressed.” Sheryl thought he was about to deliver bad news. “All I could think was, 'Have my parents died?' He wouldn't look at me!"

Sheryl continued: "So now picture this: I'm in a towel and a turban sitting on his lap, and he's on the toilet. He said, 'I have been looking for something for a long time and didn't know it. Today I think I found it.'  

"Of course this means nothing to me. And he had the ring out of sight, he brought up the box and he opened it and he said… nothing. Nothing.

"I'm still dripping wet, looking at this ring in the box thinking, 'What is this?' I didn't say anything. He didn't say anything. Finally, he breaks the silence with, 'Well, it looks to me like somebody's engaged.' 

"Now 50 years later, I remind him, 'You never asked me to marry you,' to which he said, 'No, I told you. Do you think for a second I was gonna give you a chance to say no?' I just hugged him, and I didn't really say yes until my father officiated and pronounced his husband and wife in 1976."

The pair tied the knot in 1976 in Acapulco, but they were first "married by a justice of the peace to ensure it was legal". The wedding was attended by both of their parents, with their fathers – both pastors – officiating.

"My dad passed away when he was 64 suddenly, but they couldn't have been more happy to see me marrying her," said Alice.

In the early days of the Alice Cooper Band, they were "a starving band in Los Angeles," says Alice, "like every other starving band".

It was through Jimi Hendrix that Alice met Shep Gordon, who became his manager, and later best friend and best man at both weddings.

"Jimi told Shep, 'You're a New York guy. You need to be a manager. I know a band that needs a manager.'  At the time, Shep was dealing grass to all the bands when it was very illegal – just grass though. We got there to the hotel, opened the door and I thought there was a smoke machine inside because it was just fog.

"What an entrance. And there's Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, every major star is sitting on the couch smoking, and Shep goes, 'Hey, I'm your manager.' 

"We never had a contract – 55 years now without a contract. We've done everything together based on total trust. I believed in him, he believed in me, we didn't need a contract – and that's the same thing with Sheryl and I."

Throughout the early years of their marriage, Alice battled a drug and alcohol addiction that left Sheryl forced to take drastic action, filing for divorce in 1983.

"We were almost divorced. Sheryl left because I was doing so much cocaine, and I totally understood it, but I was hooked," Alice told HELLO!.

"We ended up in court, and on our way into the court, I grabbed her and we went into a broom closet.. I said, 'You know this is wrong, this is totally wrong. I'll do whatever you need me to do. Just give me a chance.' 

"We went to see a Christian counselor in Tucson, and at that point, I knew I wasn't giving anything up, I was gaining. We revamped our marriage, and changed the trajectory. We never had another problem, really ever after that, and I've been sober 43 years now."

"People say to young brides, 'You're never going to love your husband as much as you do on the wedding day,' but they have no clue the depth, the insight, the growth that will happen," added Sheryl.

"Somebody once said, 'You always have these mountaintop experiences, you have such a great marriage,' but fruit never grows on the mountain top. It grows in the valley, and you have to go through those trenches, those forges and dig your way out, plow your way through. But you commit to each other and there's not an option not to be with him."

The pair credit a hierarchy for the success of their marriage, with their spiritual relationship coming first. Both are devout Christians, and Sheryl called it "our glue that weaves its way through the fabric of our personalities, our decision making, how we've raised our children, how we relate to other people".

"I think marriage needs a hierarchy because you have to know what comes first, and that is our spiritual relationship," she said. "Maybe the second rung down would be me. I know I'm valued, important, considered, and always elevated and then right under that come our children. 

"Any parent that says, 'Well, honey, you know the children come first,' that's a recipe for disaster."

For Alice, he makes it clear that his career is around the sixth rung on the ladder, and is never more important than his family and faith.

"It's my job and I love doing it, and I've loved doing it for all these years as a creative person. I love writing songs and performing them, but that's way down here [on the ladder]," he said.

"I treat Alice as a character. I'm not him."

After 50 years together, Alice and Sheryl have wise words of advice for a successful marriage.

"I think we both fall into the same category of being, for the most part,agreeable people. Especially Alice, he has the gift of diplomacy. I've learned a lot of that from you; you can dissolve a situation that's escalating immediately," said Sheryl. "And anybody that tells you that marriage is 50/50, run!"

"It's 100 to 100 always or nothing," added Alice.

"Every sitcom has the husband and the wife trying to get one over on each other, trying to control the marriage, and I always said, 'What a horrible idea.' Sheryl does things better than I do, and I do things better than her, and that's how we always work. I've never slammed the door and walked out. She's never gotten in a car and driven away in anger."

There is, however, one key part that they've never forgotten in 50 years.

"I live with romance, poetry, a lot of laughter, and the secret? He still pursues me like I'm not already his, " revealed Sheryl, as Alice concluded: "I tell people sometimes, 'The secret to a great marriage is every once in a while, you whisk your wife off to a cheap hotel on a Tuesday.'"