Chaz Bono has been through a lot, and being the child of a major music star and actress in Cher hasn’t made things much easier. He’s always been in the public spotlight, and that can be difficult even at the best of times.

However, few stories are more inspirational than Chaz’s is. In 2011, at age 39, he began his transition to the male gender. Cher has always been supportive of her beloved son, though things weren’t easy in the beginning.

In fact, Cher had problems with her son being gay at first. According to Chaz, she went “ballistic” when she found out.
Most people probably know Cher. When I think of her, I can’t help but think on her amazing career. When she started out, she did so alongside Sonny Bono, a person with whom she had both a wonderful and stormy relationship.

by Taboola
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The couple met for the first time in Los Angeles, when Cher had dropped out of high school at 16 and moved LA. She took acting classes and worked to support herself. Boy, was she a terrific singer.

Chaz Bono – the son of Cher
Sonny, who was 11 years older, worked as an assistant to legendary record producer Phil Spector. Before long, the couple started to hit it off.

Bono found work for Cher as a backup session singer, where she performed on many of Specter’s recordings. The Ronettes’ super-hit Be My Baby and The Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling were just two of many songs Cheer worked on.

Sonny and Cher first collaborated on their own records in 1964. However, their first singles weren’t really what the audience wanted. This all changed in September 1964, when they released Baby Don’t Go.

Cher’s mother Georgia Holt had her brother Mickey hire the duo to open for the Righteous Brothers, and it was the start of a long and successful career which would culminate with Cher being labeled “The Goddess of Pop.

Cher and her family
Baby Don’t Go became the duo’s first hit, and proved the beginning of a highly successful pairing that lasted until the mid-1970s.

And on a personal level, the love between Cher and Sonny grew.
Though Cher was immediately interested in Bono, he was actually said to be more interested in one of her friends.

“I was with my girlfriend, who was really beautiful,” Cher recalled. “He liked her, so he didn’t really say anything to me. He was like, ‘Oh yeah, kid.’”

She added that “everyone just disappeared” when she first saw him, recalling that “he was the most unusual person I’d ever seen.”

Soon, Cher and Bono were living together. They began a romantic relationship, though this took a while to blossom. According to Cher, Bono simply wasn’t physically attracted to her at first. That soon changed, and the couple began dating for real.

In 1965, the two got married – and at the same time, started to work on their professional music careers.
Most importantly, the couple had a child, Chaz Bono, together. He was originally born Chastity Bono on March 4, 1969. However, because he was a celebrity child, he became famous immediately and it wasn’t long before TV audiences got to see him.

Chaz Bono – early life
Bono was named after the movie Chasity, a movie produced by Sonny. Cher played the lead role, portraying a young, bisexual hippie runaway.

Apparently, Chastity was conceived during the making of the film.

As a child, Chaz appeared numerous times in The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. He usually came on at the end of each episode, when Sonny and Cher sang “I Got You Babe“.

In this way, Chaz became a familiar face to the American audience.

But few knew what he was going through at home and at school. Early in his life, Chaz couldn’t relate to other girls and their interests.
”I’d look at other girls my age and feel perplexed by their interest in fashion or which boy was the cutest,” Chaz told Daily Mail in 2011.

Came out as a lesbian
At age 18, Chaz came out to both parents as a lesbian.

“As a child, I always felt there was something different about me. I’d look at other girls my age and feel perplexed by their obvious interest in the latest fashion, which boy in class was the cutest, and who looked the most like cover girl Christie Brinkley,” Chaz wrote in his book Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families.”

“When I was 13, I finally found a name for exactly how I was different. I realized I was gay.”

For Cher, who would later become an icon among the LGBTQ community, it wasn’t “easy” for her to deal with her daughter coming out as a lesbian.

“When I found out Chaz was gay, I didn’t go through it that easily,” Cher said in an interview with PrideSource.