Dead Pelé: his intense private life with three wives and seven children recognized by four different women

Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Pele, legend of world football and considered one of the best in history, has had an intense private life due to his romantic relationships with various women: he has been married three times and has acknowledged that he is the father of seven children. Many of his heirs spent Christmas with their hospitalized father and accompanied him until his death on Thursday.

His first marriage was to Rosemeri dos Reis, whom he married in 1966. From this union were born Kelly (55 years old), edinho (52) and Jennifer (43).

Kely, who is a plastic artist, has been the one who has been most active in informing the press and followers about her father’s health since the beginning of his hospitalization on November 29 at the Albert Einstein Hospital in San Pablo .

Edinho (Edson) was the coach of Londrina Sports Club, but when his father fell ill, he left the team indefinitely to accompany him. He tried to follow in his father’s footsteps in football, but he never really stood out as a goalkeeper.

At that time, Pele also had a daughter, Flavia (54), the result of an extramarital affair in 1968 with the journalist Lenita Kurtz. She recognized it in 2002.

The physiotherapist, who accompanied Kely in his father’s battle against cancer, is the fruit of a brief relationship with the then 22-year-old entrepreneur from Rio Grande do Sul, already fully married to Rosemeri. Pele acknowledged paternity after a DNA test.

The second marriage was with the gospel singer Assyria Lemos Seixaswith who oh king He lived a more media-related period than his personal life, when he was already retired.

They got married in 1994 and had twins. Joshua Y Blue sky, who are now 26 years old. Both were also in the hospital, accompanied by their half-sister gemdaughter of Assyria, who remained close to Pele until the last day.

In addition to the five children who accompanied him at Christmas and Jennifer (who wasn’t there, or at least doesn’t appear in the photos uploaded by her family), Pelé also had Sandroa daughter he did not recognize and with whom he experienced some of the most controversial episodes off the field, which usually bring back memories in the networks.

The result of a relationship with domestic worker Anísia Machado, who died in 2014, Sandra proved Pelé’s paternity in court and earned the right to use the surname Arantes do Nascimento. Sandra died in 2006eight years before her mother, who was a 42-year-old breast cancer victim.

After a five-year legal battle, the courts ruled in 1996 in favor of the young woman, whose story she told in the book ‘The Girl the King Didn’t Want’, before dying in 2006. Pelé was disowned by her two grandchildren for having “abandoned them intellectually, morally and materially”.

In addition to these relationships, Pelé also had a long relationship with the singer Xuxa, for six years, one of his most media relationships. He has been married to entrepreneur Marcia Aoki since 2016. Marcia, 57, is his third wife.

From the Cosmos to Xuxa and an imprisoned son

His first marriage, with his three children, the “official” family, settled in New York in 1975 after moving from Santos to Cosmos. The three children would remain there with their mother after their parents divorced in the early 1980s. Single again, Pele fell in love with Xuxa, then a young model who had posed nude.

He then became a television star in Brazil hosting children’s programs and shared his life with another Brazilian idol, the late Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna.

Pele was an almost “absent” father to three children from his first marriage. “When I lived in the United States, I had almost no contact with my father,” Edinho testified in 2020 in an interview with Canal Football Club.

“I only saw him two or three times a year for birthdays and Christmas. He would often bring us together and not come,” she explained.

Returning to Brazil at the age of 16, Pele’s son approached his father and embarked on a modest career as a goalkeeper. But his legal missteps brought him more fame.

Sentenced in 2017 to nearly 13 years in prison for money laundering, Edinho made several round trips to prison before being released on parole in late 2019.

Pele’s second marriage was to a psychologist and gospel singer in 1994. Two years later they became parents to twins Joshua and Celeste. The couple separated after thirteen years.

In 2020, his ex-wife filed legal proceedings for non-payment of alimony. In 2016, then 75, Pelé married for the third time Aoki, a 42-year-old entrepreneur, whom he had met in New York in the 1980s and then met her again in an elevator of a building in São Paulo in 2010. A union defined ” the ultimate love” from the football legend.

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