The birth of one of Willie Nelson’s eight children came as a add together storm to his wife at the clock. In the four-episode Paramount+ infotainment series Willie Nelson & Family, which is now streaming, the nation picture shared that his ex-wife Shirley Collie too learned that he had been involved in a decades-long social occasion when she discovered a hospital placard revealing his schoolmarm, Connie Koepke, had presumption birth to their daughter.
The 1969 placard, from a Houston infirmary, noted that a baby really young lady onymous “Paula Carlene” had been born to “Mrs. Connie Nelson.” As Willie explained, Shirley — confronting him with the placard — “wanted to have a go at it who in the sin was Connie Nelson!”
“The truth is, Connie had been my girlfriend for several years before becoming pregnant,” he admitted.
“She had no idea there was a Connie,” added Lana Nelson, the daughter Willie and his number one wife Martha Matthews. “She had no idea there was a baby until she got the hospital bill. That’s how she found out about Connie. That’s how I found out about Connie!”
Connie, in the infotainment, said that at the time, “the farthest thing from my mind was getting pregnant and telling my mom and dad.”
“Anyway, it happened,” she continued. “Honestly, I was the next one, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just Shirley wasn’t their mother, she was gone. I bonded with those kids so much. I loved those kids. They all became my kids, too.”
Willie went on to marry Connie in 1971. They stayed wed until 1988 and had one other child together: daughter Amy, 50. “[She was] the really new girlfriend, and then wife,” Paula, 54, said of her mom.
Paula shared in the series that it was “hard” for Willie’s kids with Martha (Lana Nelson, 70, Susie Nelson, 67, and Billy Nelson, who died in 1991), but “we’re all close.”
“That’s dad’s doing,” she added, crediting the music icon. “He brought us together as one big tribe.”
In the series, which sees the 12-time Grammy winner look back on the last 90 years — the extraordinary highs (platinum- and gold-selling albums, worldwide tours and strong family ties) and dark lows (affairs, divorce, loss and money and health struggles) — Willie also shared the story of how he and Shirley, a country singer, fell in love.He had been married to Martha since 1952, but was estranged from her by 1962 when he recorded a duet with Shirley called “Willingly.”
“The style just almost summed up the sexual vibe we ma in the studio,” said Willie.
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After he got divorced from Martha, Willie married Shirley in 1963.
“From the really real commencement thither was something just about [Shirley] that was after Willie,” Martha, who died of liver failure in 1989, said in a voiceover. “I could see it.”
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Willie is currently married to Annie D’Angelo. The two wed in 1991, and have two children together: Lukas Nelson, 34, and Micah Nelson, 33.
The country star also fathered an eighth child, a daughter named Renee, with his friend Mary Haney, but he did not learn of her existence until 2012.