Cher on the ‘Special Arrangement’ She Had with Then-Closeted David Geffen: ‘A Different Thing’

Cher and David Geffen’s relationship may have been unconventional — but there were real feelings involved.

On Monday, Jan. 5, Cher went on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast and opened up about her relationship with Geffen, 82, whom she dated in the ’70s.

In the interview, Cher, 79, began talking about how her ex-husband and business partner Sonny Bono was first into her roommate, who was gay.

“Not an issue in the ’70s ’cause you dated Geffen for quite a while,” the host, 51, said.

Then, the “Believe” singer argued that her situation was “a different thing.”

“Honestly, it’s a different thing because he never had been in love with anybody,” she explained. “So I was the first person that he had real feelings for. We had a special arrangement when we met.”

Cher dated the entertainment executive shortly after she separated from Bono. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Geffen helped Cher remove herself from her business ties to Bono during their separation. The pair attended the 1974 Grammys together and dated for two years.

“I was the first person to share his bed and to share his life,” Cher said in The Operator, a biography of Geffen by Thomas R. King. “People don’t believe that, or they don’t want to believe it, or they don’t understand how it could be. But we were really crazy about each other.”

In 2014, the “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” singer told Extra that she and Geffen talked about marriage — but she was afraid.

“I just had been married! I was just so frightened of it,” she said. “At that point in his life, I was the right person for him.”

Geffen came out publicly as gay at the AIDS Project Los Angeles Commitment to Life dinner in November 1992.

Elsewhere in the podcast with Shepard, Cher said that Geffen was a “wonderful” person — and that they had maintained a friendship after the split.

Cher is now in a relationship with music executive Alexander “AE” Edwards, to whom she was first linked in November 2022.

Meanwhile, Geffen’s marriage to David Armstrong was terminated on Nov. 24. The billionaire filed for divorce after two years of marriage, citing irreconcilable differences and listing the pair’s date of separation as Feb. 22, 2025.