Everything Whoopi Goldberg Has Said About Marriage Over the Years

Whoopi Goldberg isn't afraid to share her opinions.

As a co-host of The View since 2007, Goldberg has been outspoken on everything from politics to the royal family to dating — and more. But beyond her seat on the long-running daytime talk show, the Till actress has also spoken candidly about another topic over the years: Marriage.

Goldberg has been married three times. At 18 years old, Goldberg wed her drug counselor Alvin Martin in 1973. The couple welcomed a daughter, Alexandrea, that same year and eventually divorced six years later in 1979.

She was then married to cinematographer David Claessen from 1986 to 1988. Her third and final marriage was to actor Lyle Trachtenberg in 1994, though they divorced the following year.

Since her third divorce, the EGOT winner has been very vocal about her views on marriage — and her plans to not wed again. Keep reading for everything Goldberg has said about marriage over the years.

She prefers to live solo

Goldberg famously told the New York Times in 2016 that she was "not that interested" in marriage — primarily because she liked to live by herself. "I'm much happier on my own," she said at the time. "I can spend as much time with somebody as I want to spend, but I'm not looking to be with somebody forever or live with someone."

She added: "I don't want somebody in my house."

The comedian echoed the same sentiments on The Tamron Hall Show in November 2019. "People keep saying 'Well, you'll find somebody,'" she told host Tamron Hall. "I'm not looking for anyone. I am very happy. I don't want to live with anybody."

In an August 2023 episode of The View, Goldberg's co-hosts had a lengthy discussion about why society often sees finding a spouse as the "ultimate goal in life." At the end of the segment, Goldberg simply said, "I don't care."

She's only been in love once

In an interview on Piers Morgan Tonight in April 2011, Goldberg shared that she had only been in love once before — and it wasn't with any of her three husbands.

"I suppose that you know, you have to actually be in love with the person that you marry. You have to really be committed to them. And I'm just — I don't have that commitment," she told Morgan.

Goldberg also shared with Morgan that she didn't marry for love; but rather, because she "wanted to feel normal."

"It seemed to me that if I was married, I'd have a much normal — more normal life," she explained. "But clearly, that's not the case. There's not a good reason to get married. You have to actually want a life with someone through ups and downs. And I — I just discovered that wasn't for me."

She doesn't believe she's cut out for marriage

Goldberg also told the New York Times that she had always felt opposed to marriage — despite being married three times. "I'm the round peg, and marriage is the square hole," she explained. "You can't have a square hole, can you?"

She doesn't want the commitment

The Sister Act star delved deeper into her reasonings for not wanting to marry again on The Tamron Hall Show in 2019. The View host revealed that she had zero desire for all of the commitments that come along with marrying someone, from the emotional to the financial.

"When you make a commitment to someone else, it's a commitment to ask their opinion and listen and work it out with them. I don't want to do that," Goldberg said. "I don't want to share money. I know it's terrible, but I don't want to do it."

She added, "I know for me it doesn't work."

She married because society expected her to

In an interview with the New York Times Magazine in 2019, Goldberg doubled down on her thoughts on marriage. She also revealed that in each of her marriages, she was conforming to what society expected her to be doing — until she decided not to anymore.

"Look, people expect you to have a boyfriend. They expect you to get married," the comedian said. "So I kept trying to do that, but I didn't want to share information with somebody else. I didn't want anybody asking me why I was doing what I was doing, or to have to make the other person feel better. But if you're in a relationship, you have to do those things, and it took me a while to figure out that I didn't want to."

Goldberg continued, "I'd be thinking, why don't I feel the thing that I'm supposed to? Then one day I thought: I don't have to do this. I don't have to conform. I tried marriage, and it wasn't for me. You can't be in a marriage because everybody's expecting you to."

She hates the phrase "you complete me"

Goldberg wrote a relationship book in 2014 called If Someone Says You Complete Me, Run! Whoopi's Big Book of Relationships, sharing lessons and advice she'd learned from her past marriages and relationships. "I think a lot of what is wrong in relationships, a lot of the reasons we have divorce in the world, is because people get into relationships for the wrong reasons," she told USA Today in 2014.

One of her biggest lessons is that what you see in romance movies doesn't always translate to real life — particularly the famous line from Jerry Maguire: "You complete me."

"If someone completes you and they drop dead, do you become half a person?" she quipped to USA Today. "You have to be a complete person when you start a relationship."

She finds relationships with younger men "tiring"

The actress is not only opposed to marriage; she no longer wants to date men younger than her. On an October 2021 episode of The View, co-host Sara Haines asked Goldberg if she prefers to go "older or younger" when it comes to dating.

"It depends on my mood," Goldberg teased. "Because it's about the person. Sometimes you meet somebody who is younger than you and … look, it would be perfect if everybody was well matched and well put together, but they're not. And you find it where you find it, and it may last a long time or it may not."

Goldberg then shared why she's stopped dating younger men. "Let me tell you why I stopped doing lots of things with younger folks," she said. "I went out with a younger dude and he said, 'I can't believe this.' I said, 'What are you talking about?' He said, 'I did not know that Paul McCartney had another band.' And you kind of go, 'The Beatles? You've never heard of The Beatles?' 'No!' "

She continued, "So you have to know when you're going younger, there's a lot of information that you have to impart. And sometimes it's tiring. But then there's the other way where you're like, 'Yeah, you're younger, but you look good! Yeah, you're alright.' So you never know."