Shannon married the rocker in 2017, just months before he died at age 69
Credit: Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Gregg Allman’s widow Shannon opens up about being labeled a “gold digger” due to their 40-year age gap
- Shannon says she and Allman, who died in 2017, bonded over shared trauma and faith after meeting at one of his solo shows
- She reflects on rejection after his death and how her faith helped her find strength and set boundaries
Gregg Allman's widow Shannon is opening up about how “deeply painful” it was to be labeled a “gold digger” amid the couple's 40-year age gap.
Shannon, 37, was engaged to the Allman Brothers Band rocker for years and married him in 2017, several months before he died of cancer that May at age 69.
In the years since his death, she's continued to share memories of their love story to Instagram and YouTube, including a new video on May 31.
In the video, Shannon said she leaned on her faith after feelings of “rage and pain and resentment and anger and upset and grief” seemingly linked to judgment and gossip.
Credit: Shannon Allman/Instagram
“Being misjudged, being misperceived, being labeled as a gold digger with daddy issues… That was deeply painful, particularly as someone with a lot of childhood trauma and the wounds of feelings rejected," she said.
In the video, Shannon said that it was such trauma that first connected her to Allman in the first place after the two met at one of his solo shows in Jacksonville, Fla. and sat talking in his dressing room for nearly four hours. She said they bonded over their faith and their trauma, including the fact that they both grew up not knowing their fathers.
She lamented the fact that after Allman's death, she had no loved ones to turn to for comfort as people spoke “so terribly” about her.
“When everyone else is calling me a gold digger, when everyone else is saying that I have daddy issues and bad intentions, when everybody else is calling my character and my truth into question…,” she said. “There was nowhere for me to just go lay my head in someone's lap and have them stroke my hair and say, ‘I see you. I love you. I know your character. I know what you did for Gregg. I know how much he loved you. I saw the love that you guys shared.' That wasn't around me. And so I became very responsible for doing that for myself and for starting to cut out the noise.”
Shannon said that in the years since, she's learned to set boundaries and stop being a “people pleaser,” but has still dealt with rejection, even from the music industry.
Credit: Shannon Allman/Instagram
“I just kept getting doors slammed in my face and doors slammed in my face when I was trying to creatively collaborate with people,” she said. “And for years, I took it so personally. I just was so bereaved and I felt so excluded and outcast and untalented. And now, I almost laugh when I look back and I realize, ‘Oh my gosh, God was protecting me the whole time. Every time I called an artist and said, ‘Do you want to collaborate on this song that Gregory and I wrote?' ‘No. No. I don't even want to hear it. I don't even want to have the conversation about it.' And in my grief and in my loneliness and in my desire for connection, it just felt so painful. And I look back now and I'm like, ‘Oh gosh, thank you so much God for protecting me.'”
Allman, a father of five, and Shannon were engaged in 2012, when she was 24 and he was in his mid-60s. Though the singer had been married six times before, including to Cher, he said in an interview with CNN that he considered Shannon his first wife.
“This time, I am really in love,” he said.
Shannon remains very active on social media, where she posts frequently about the “Melissa” singer. In May, she shared a video slideshow compiling photos of the couple from over the years, and on June 3, shared a post about how an upcoming documentary about Allman is “stirring up memories and emotions.”
“How differently people treat women after our husband dies is…eye-opening,” she wrote.
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