Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford


Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford is an American singer best known as the first wife of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, and as the mother of singers Carnie Wilson and Wendy Wilson of Wilson Phillips. In the 1960s, she founded the Honeys, and after their dissolution in 1969, she founded American Spring with her sister Diane Rovell.

Biography

1961–69

Rovell and Wilson met when she attended a Beach Boys concert at Pandora's Box, a Sunset Strip nightclub, in October 1962 with her sister Diane and their cousin Ginger Blake, who was dating Brian's then collaborator Gary Usher. Wilson and Rovell began dating when Wilson was 20 years old and Rovell was 15 years old.
Wilson became the producer of the Honeys, a girl group consisting of Marilyn, Diane and Ginger. Wilson and Marilyn married on December 7, 1964 as the Honeys' career was declining. The couple had two daughters, Carnie and Wendy.

1970–79

In 1971, Marilyn and Diane formed the band Spring and together they recorded a few singles and an album. In 1974, due to Brian's growing seclusion from the outside world, following his father's death, Marilyn temporarily stopped her music career. Marilyn and Brian amicably divorced in 1979.

1980s–present

Marilyn and the Honeys reunited for a comeback record in 1983 called Ecstasy, and they again reformed in the 1990s and performed at occasional venues in Southern California. Marilyn has appeared in numerous documentaries and other programs about the Beach Boys, Wilson Phillips, and the music of the 1960s and 1970s. She was portrayed in ', and in the earlier '. In 2012, she also made appearances in her daughters' reality TV series . She was also portrayed in "Love and Mercy".
She has remarried and is now known as Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford. She works as a real estate agent in Los Angeles, California.