Sharon Osbourne: 5 Little-Known Facts About Ozzy’s Wife

Sharon Osbourne is a legendary rock promoter who’s been managing her husband Ozzy’s career for decades. Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne got married in 1982, have three children and were at the center of one of the first reality programs, The Osbournes. But as news breaks this weekend that the long-time couple may be headed for a breakup, there is increased interest in the woman best known for her no-nonsense manner and shock of red hair. The host of The Talk is a complex and interesting woman, with more than a few tantalizing tidbits lurking in her biography.

She managed Smashing Pumpkins — for a few months.

While the exact duration of Osbourne’s tenure as the band’s manager back in 1999 is up for debate — The Guardian reported it was three months, NME said it was four — it was clear there was no love lost between her and Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan. NME said the dust-up happened after Sharon objected to Corgan wearing a dress in a video, and he responded by giving her the silent treatment. The Guardian reported that Sharon Osbourne later regretted her press release announcing her departure, which said she was quitting for “medical reasons,” as “Billy Corgan is making me sick.”

“I shouldn’t have said it, but I like to be honest, and after all these years I can’t be bothered being politically correct.”

Her father was Ozzy’s first manager.

Sharon first met Ozzy when she was 18, when her father, Don Arden, managed his band, Black Sabbath. After Black Sabbath and Osbourne parted ways in 1979, Sharon began to date Ozzy and took over as his manager — much to her father’s displeasure. The Guardian interview, published in 2001, said that Osbourne had cut off contact with her father because of numerous issues — not just the management of Ozzy’s career. Arden died in 2007 and as of 2013, Sharon had a strained relationship with her brother, David.

She’s been open about her battles against cancer and mental illness.

Osbourne underwent surgical treatment and chemotherapy for cancer in 2002. BBC News reported at the time that Osbourne’s cancer, originally found in her colon, was later detected in one of her lymph nodes. In 2012, Sharon revealed she’d battled depression for 16 years and took medication for the illness. Glamour quoted her succinct description of what life for her was like with depression.

“Some days are better than others, and some days you feel like you just want to pull the sheets over your head and just stay in that bed and not do a damn thing – except rot.”

She once lost her tooth live on-air.

During a 2014 taping of The Talk, Sharon Osbourne could feel her tooth coming loose — but instead of hiding it, the notoriously open Osbourne just let it all out. As USA Today recalled, she complained to her co-hosts that the tooth was a pricey implant. She eventually pleaded to the audience for help, asking, “seriously, has anyone got any glue?”

She’s a doting grandmother.

Sharon and Ozzy are parents to three children, Kelly, Jack and Aimee — Kelly and Jack were part of The Osbournes, but Aimee declined to participate in the show — and Jack is the father of two baby girls. She told Hello in January, 2015, that she’s what all grandmothers tend to be — indulgent and somewhat of a rule-breaker.

“I am the typical grandmother that does everything that you shouldn’t. I spoil her, I let her stay up all night she can do whatever she wants so I am the stereotypical grandmother and she loves it.

“We have a sign up at my house that says ‘what goes on at grandma’s, stays at grandma’s’ so we never talk about the things we get up to.”

Sharon Osbourne is co-host of The Talk which airs weekdays on CBS.

[Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images]