I will always love you!
Whitney’s gay lover tells all
As Whitney Houston’s music career soared, rumours swirled that the “Saving All My Love” singer was secretly romancing her best friend Robyn Crawford. Now, seven years after the superstar’s tragic death, the relationship has been confirmed.
Despite being Whitney’s maid-of-honour for her wedding to bad-boy rapper Bobby Brown in 1992, Robyn has revealed that she and the legendary diva shared a passionate love affair that began after they met in 1980.
In her new book, A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston, Robyn describes how she and Whitney fell in love as teenagers after meeting at summer camp. She was 18, Whitney was 16, and she says the singer “stopped me in my tracks”.
Robyn reveals, “Whitney and I started spending as much time as we could together. A few weeks later, she invited me over. We talked and talked, then all of a sudden we were face to face.
“That first kiss was long and warm like honey. As we eased out of it, our eyes locked, my nerves shot up and my heart beat furiously. Something was happening between us.”
The pair became lovers, even sharing a flat together, but in 1982, when Whitney signed to Arista Records, the “I Will Always Love You” hitmaker broke off their physical relationship.
Writes fitness trainer Robyn, 58, “She said we should not be physical any more. I wasn’t totally blindsided – we’d talked about how our relationship might affect her career. She said, ‘If people found out about us, they would use this against us.’ Back in the ’80s that’s how it felt.”
The pair continued to share an apartment, sleeping in different bedrooms, and eventually Whitney put Robyn on staff to act as her confidante and protector.
As Whitney became a global megastar, however,
Robyn became more and more concerned about her friend’s drug use, and at one point she and Whitney’s dad John tried to persuade her to go to rehab.
“She said, ‘I’m not ready to go. I don’t want to go.’ I had done all I could do and for the first time I realised that I needed to save myself. I quit my job in 2000.”
The pair had little contact after that and on February 11, 2012, Whitney, aged 48, drowned in the bath of her suite at the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel after a cocaine overdose.
“I was out to dinner when a friend called with the shocking news,” says Robyn, who is now married to Lisa Hintelmann with two adopted children. “I felt my insides shattering.”