Willie Nelson - Personal Life

Personal Life

Nelson lives in Maui, Hawaii, in a largely self-sustaining community where all the homes use only solar power. Neighbors include Kris Kristofferson, Woody Harrelson, and Owen Wilson.

Willie Nelson has married four times and fathered seven children. His first marriage was to Martha Matthews; it lasted from 1952 to 1962, and produced three children: Lana, Susie, and Billy. The last committed suicide in 1991. The marriage was marked by violence, with Matthews assaulting Nelson several times. Nelson's next marriage was to Shirley Collie in 1963. The couple divorced in 1971, after Collie found a bill from the maternity ward of a Houston hospital charged to Nelson and Connie Koepke for the birth of Paula Carlene Nelson. Koepke and Nelson married the same year and had two daughters, Paula Carlene and Amy Lee. Following a divorce in 1988, he married his current wife, Annie D'Angelo, in 1991. They have two sons, Lukas Autry and Jacob Micah. Nelson traces his genealogy to the American Revolutionary War, in which his ancestor John Nelson served as a major.

While swimming in Hawaii in 1981, Nelson's lung collapsed. All of his scheduled concerts were cancelled and he was taken to the Maui Memorial Hospital. Nelson temporarily stopped smoking cigarettes each time his lungs became congested, and resumed when the congestion ended. He smoked between two and three packages per day. After suffering of pneumonia a repeated number of times, he decided he had to quit either marijuana or tobacco. Nelson decided to quit tobacco. In 2008 he started to smoke marijuana with a carbon-free system to avoid the effects of smoke in his lungs. In 2004 Nelson underwent surgery for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, as he had damaged his wrists by continuously playing the guitar. On the recommendation of his doctor, he cancelled his scheduled concerts and only wrote songs during his recovery. In 2012 he cancelled a fund-raising appearance in the Denver area. Nelson suffered of breathing problems due to high altitude and emphysema, he was taken to a local hospital. His publicist Elaine Schock confirmed soon after that Nelson's health was good, and that he was heading to his next scheduled concert in Dallas, Texas.

Nelson has been arrested several times for marijuana possession. The first occasion was in 1974, in Dallas, Texas. Twenty years later, in 1994, highway patrolmen found a marijuana cigarette in his car near Waco, Texas; the resulting court appearance caused him to cancel his appearance at the Grammy awards. While travelling to Ann W. Richards' funeral in 2006, Nelson, along with his manager and his sister, Bobbi, were arrested in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana and charged with possession of marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms. Nelson received six months probation. On November 26, 2010, Nelson was arrested for possession of six ounces of marijuana found in his tour bus while travelling from Los Angeles to Texas. He was released after paying bail of US$2,500. Prosecutor Kit Bramblett supported not sentencing Nelson to jail due to the amount of marijuana being small, but suggested instead a US$100 fine and told Nelson that he would have him sing "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" for the court. Judge Becky Dean-Walker stated that Nelson had to pay the fine but did not require him to perform the song, explaining that the prosecutor was joking. Nelson's lawyer Joe Turner reached an agreement with the prosecutor. Nelson was set to pay a US$500 fine to avoid a two-year jail sentence with a 30-day review period, which in case of another incident would end the agreement. The judge later rejected the agreement, claiming that Nelson was receiving preferential treatment for his celebrity status, when the offence normally carried a one-year jail sentence.