Carol Bongiovi, the supportive mother of the pop star Jon Bon Jovi, died on Tuesday at a hospital in Long Branch, N.J. She was 83.
Her family confirmed the death in a statement.
Ms. Bongiovi, a former Playboy bunny and U.S. Marine, according to her family, was the founder of her son’s fan club, which she ran from a flower shop in suburban New Jersey. She came to be known to fans as Mom Jovi.
“Our mother was a force to be reckoned with,” Bon Jovi said in the statement. “Her spirit and can-do attitude shaped this family.”
She was born Carol A. Sharkey on July 12, 1940, in Erie, Pa. In 1959, she joined the U.S. Marine Corps, where she met her future husband, John Bongiovi Sr.
After they were discharged from the military, the couple married and raised three sons in Sayreville, N.J., starting with Jon, who was born in 1962.
Ms. Bongiovi worked as a bunny at the Playboy Club in New York City when Jon was growing up, he told Larry King in 2006. “I did go there as a kid,” he said. “Oh, God, did I have the stories and the pictures.”
Ms. Bongiovi and her husband bought Jon his first guitar for Christmas when he was about 13. She encouraged him to perform from a young age.
“I would hold him in front of a mirror and dance with him,” she told The New York Times in 1989. “And then I would get him to stand up, and I’d applaud and show him how to stand up and take a bow.”
He changed the spelling of his last name after signing his first record deal.
Ms. Bongiovi inspired some of her son’s fashion choices, including a long, cream Christian Dior coat, which Jon borrowed from his mother’s wardrobe and wore in 1984.
Bon Jovi’s working-class background — his mother was a florist, his father a hairstylist — formed part of the narrative he built as a rock star from New Jersey.
In 1989, Ms. Bongiovi and her husband sold the family’s four-bedroom colonial home to the cable music channel MTV, which gave it away in a contest promoting the release of “New Jersey,” an album by Bon Jovi’s rock band.
The family then moved to Holmdel, N.J., where Ms. Bongiovi lived until her death.
In addition to her husband, of 63 years, and her son Jon, she is survived by two other sons, Anthony and Matthew, and eight grandchildren.
Bon Jovi paid homage to his parents’ enduring marriage in the music video for the 2021 song “Story of Love.” In the video, he sings and strums a guitar in front of a large black-and-white portrait of his parents as a young couple.
The song closes with the lyrics:
Fathers love daughters like mothers love sons
They’ve been writing our story before there was one
From the day you arrive, ’til you walk, ’til you run
There is nothing but pride, there is nothing but love
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