When Cher and Sonny Bono went their separate ways in 1975 after a decade of marriage, things between the pair were tense.
“He pissed me off royally and hurt me,” Cher, 77, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.
But by the time of Bono’s sudden death in 1998, any icy relations had thawed, thanks in part to a welcome apology from the singer-songwriter-turned-politician, Cher, who’s set to release her first holiday album Christmas on Oct. 20, reveals.
“One day he came into the kitchen at my house and said, ‘Cher, I want to apologize. I realized that I hurt you in so many ways, and I was wrong,’” the “Believe" singer recalls. “That went a long way for me.”
Though Bono’s olive branch “didn’t cure everything,” it was significant for Cher, who shares son Chaz Bono, 54, with the late star.
“The fact that he came and said it meant something to me, that at least he acknowledged that he had been hurtful,” she explains.
Cher and Bono — who married in 1964 — found music fame in the 1960s with hits like “I Got You Babe” and “The Beat Goes On,” and later parlayed that fame into TV stardom with their CBS variety show The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, which aired from 1971 to 1974.
Though their marriage didn’t last, Cher says she and her ex “had so much fun together,” especially while on set, noting that any anger between the two would dissipate “in five seconds” once they got to work.
“Working together was the easiest part of it, because we really made each other laugh,” she says. “You can’t fake that kind of stuff.”
Bono, who’d given up the music business for a career in politics, died at age 62 in a skiing accident, and Cher’s 1998 comeback album Believe was dedicated to him.
She’s currently dating music producer Alexander “A.E.” Edwards, 37, to whom she was first linked last November.
“I hate when people say people are special, but lots of people say I’m special, so I can say that he’s special," she says. "No matter what happens, I love being with him. He makes me laugh, and we have fun. What I learned is that it’s never too late. If you wrote out all the statistics, you would go, ‘Well, this is doomed.’ But we’ve been together a year, and if it was just a year, it would’ve been worth it. I’ve had the best time.”