As New York City officials prepare for the elaborate, secretive event at Madison Square Garden widely believed to be the wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, the venue and the circumstances have transformed greatly since the last celebrity wedding held there, more than a half a century earlier.
On June 5, 1974, the funk pioneer Sly Stone exchanged vows with the young model and actress Kathy Silva. These nuptials at the World’s Most Famous Arena happened in front of around 23,000 people in an event steeped in the era’s counterculture of rebellion, celebrity and high fashion.
By then, the Garden had proven itself as a cultural hub, the site of political conventions and the setting where Marilyn Monroe had sultrily serenaded President John F. Kennedy with her famous rendition of “Happy Birthday.” It had played host to the N.B.A. finals a year earlier, with the Knicks ultimately crowned champions. Stone had vaulted to fame as the frontman of Sly and the Family Stone, fusing psychedelic rock, funk and soul to deliver party anthems like “Everyday People” and “Dance to the Music.”
Stone and Silva already shared a son, Sylvester Jr., and the topic of marriage was on his mind in the early 1970s. Stephen Paley, who worked in artists and repertoire at Epic Records, jokingly suggested the wedding should take place before a concert. It wasn’t long before the joke sprouted into a profitable plan.
“He called me back later that day, and we grew the idea from a seed to a bud, from a bud to a flower,” Stone wrote in his 2023 memoir, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” “I could do a gig, get paid, and get married at the same time.”
The television personality Geraldo Rivera, who hosted an evening news program at the time, “Good Night America,” attended with plans of being an usher.
“There have been some flamboyant and elaborate weddings over the years, but I can’t imagine one that would top this,” Rivera said in an interview. “I don’t think anyone ever had the idea of getting married at Madison Square Garden to a full house of crazed fans onstage. It was really quite spectacular.”
The fashion and set designer Joe Eula planned and directed the ceremony and envisioned a grand event. But Maureen Orth, reporting for Newsweek, wrote that some of the ambitious plans needed to be pared back.
The Humane Society, for example, argued against plans to release 500 white doves in the arena. The plan of having someone wear white wings and fly high inside the Garden via wires — like Tinkerbell — was dropped after officials asked for a $125,000 security bond.
Hours before the ceremony, Eula was still working out the stage positions for nearly a dozen fashion models dressed in black Halston gowns, The New York Times reported.
Rivera said he had quickly found himself more involved in the festivities after watching Stone duck into a bathroom with a friend before the ceremony.
“He was a wonderful guy, very charismatic, but he had a real drug issue,” Rivera said. “I kind of became the responsible adult. I went in there to urge him to come out, which he did, ultimately, with his great style, and walked out on the stage, and I kind of became his best man, standing by him.”
The event opened with a performance by the singer Eddie Kendricks. The wedding party emerged in Halston attire, draped in sequined chiffon fabric. Stone wore a gold-sequined cape, and Silva matched in a sheath gown.
“At first Sly didn’t repeat his vows, but after prompting from the preacher he mumbled, ‘I do,’” Orth wrote.
Orth added that despite a lack of preparation from Sly for the performance that followed the ceremony, his fans shrieked and danced to his music. “Sly played his hits briskly and, without an encore, left in his brand-new $38,000 brown Mercedes limo, one of a dozen cars he owns,” Orth reported. The car’s price would be equivalent to about $260,000 today.
Silva’s parents attended the event. Her father, William Silva, told The Times that Silva’s mother had “expected a garden wedding, but not this kind.”
“We had twenty thousand guests at least, with some of the estimates as high as twenty-five,” Stone wrote in his book. “Years later I saw a picture of a ticket someone kept: $8.50 for a wedding and a concert both. A bargain.” That ticket price works out to about $58 in today’s dollars.
Stone and Silva broke up just a few months later and divorced in 1976.
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