The Beginning:
Shortly after the Beatles revolution began, John Lennon married an art school classmate, Cynthia Powell, with whom he had a son, Julian, in 1963. Their marriage was rocky, especially after Lennon began openly dating an older Japanese-American artist named Yoko Ono.

Cynthia divorced John in 1968, clearing the way for John and Yoko to begin living and working together full time. The cover of their first release together, Unfinished Music, No. 1 -- Two Virgins, featured a stark naked John & Yoko, causing it to be banned frommany stores.

Lennon and Ono became the subject of further media attention as reporters speculated that Ono was "controlling" Lennon and causing trouble for the beloved Beatles. In the spring of 1969, shortly after the trouble-filled Get Back sessions were completed, Lennon and a very pregnant Ono embarked on a "honeymoon" to Europe, stopping along the way to get married in Gibraltar on March 20th. The couple staged a notorious "Bed-In" at the Amsterdam Hilton, where they recorded the single "Give Peace a Chance," released later that year. {see The Ballad of John & Yoko}

Today:
Yoko stated on the anniversary of Lennon's death in a London paper that Lennon sought seclusion in a move to New York's exclusive Dakota building (where Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman December 8, 1980), and that "far from being the arrogant and overbearing woman portrayed in the press", she made most of the sacrifices in the relationship.

``I lost credibility as an artist. My ideas were not killed but were ignored. That hurt sometimes,'' she told the Express.

~excerpts edited from Rolling Stone Magazine and London Express