Barry Manilow Opens Up About His Cosmetic Procedures and Life Journey
Barry Manilow, the iconic soft rock legend, has recently opened up about the cosmetic procedures he has undergone over his six-decade-long career to maintain his youthful appearance. At 83 years old, the singer is preparing for the release of his 33rd studio album, What a Time, which will be his first record with original material in nearly 15 years.
“I don’t know how that happened, by the way — I don’t get Botox or anything,” Manilow said in an interview with the LA Times. “Maybe I don’t have to hang it up yet. I look fantastic, but I’m a hundred years old, right?”
Manilow, who was born as Pincus, revealed that he had one facelift when he and his manager husband Garry Kief were living in Los Angeles. He added that he would consider another if he noticed “something [was] falling down.”
“But after that it’s just been a little here, a little there,” he explained. “I’m as vain as anybody else. One of my old friends, his mother said, ‘I always knew he was talented, but when did he get so handsome?’”
Manilow, who is just one Oscar away from achieving elite EGOT status, is opening up about his life ahead of the June 5 release of his new album. The Sun Shine singer recently successfully battled stage one lung cancer, undergoing a lobectomy last December to remove the diseased lobe on his left lung.
The Brooklyn native smoked cigarettes from age nine to 39 and later vaped. “I vape but hardly — I just like holding it,” Manilow said. “I was a great smoker. Brooklyn in the 1950s? Please… I got up to three packs of Pall Mall non-filters a day, and it never bothered me — never had any problem breathing. I was just a skinny piano player who smoked. That’s who I am. That’s who I was.”
Last month, the Mandy star celebrated his 12th wedding anniversary with Kief, whom he secretly began dating in 1978. Sources told the National Enquirer in 2015 that Manilow and the 77-year-old president of Barry Manilow Productions “did not file the [legal] paperwork to formalize their union out of fear the big news would leak.”
“They all knew. I never really hid it, but in the 1970s and 1980s, that would have killed the career, and I didn’t want to do that. So I just never talked about it,” Manilow said. “I’m very lucky — I live in the most gorgeous place [Palm Springs] I’ve ever seen and I have the most wonderful partner that you can imagine. I’m grateful he’s chosen to share his life with me. We’ve been together for over 46 years, and we still laugh and we still love each other. That’s the greatest award I’ll ever get.”
Manilow’s second marriage ended in 1965 when his high school sweetheart, Susan Deixler, annulled their one-year nuptials. Despite this, the Dancin’ in the Aisles singer continues to thrive, pulling in 4.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
He is scheduled to perform on June 25 in Reading, Pennsylvania, though it’s unclear if he will be well enough. “Since the surgery, I can’t go on the road. 90 minutes of screaming in tune, which is what I do for a living — I’m not up for that yet,” Manilow said. “I will be, but it’s taking a long time to get my voice back. They warned me that I’d have to learn to breathe again. So these days, I get up, I go to my piano and I try to be creative. Before I know it, the afternoon’s over.”
The Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee added: “I just have to get better and do what the doctors are telling me. It’s the only way out.”
