Tina Turner lost 2 of her sons before she died. Here's everything you need to know about her 4 children. (2024)

The pair welcomed their only child together, a son named Ronnie. She also adopted two of Ike's sons from a previous relationship, Ike Jr. and Michael. In turn, Ike adopted her eldest son, Craig, whom she shared with Raymond Hill, another of Ike's Kings of Rhythm bandmates.

Tragically, the "What's Love Got to Do with It" singer was preceded in death by both of her biological sons: Craig died by suicide in 2018 and Ronnie died just five months ago

Here's everything you need to know about Tina's four children, including where they are now.

Tina was 18 years old when she gave birth to her eldest son, Craig

Tina was still in high school and going by her birth name, Anna Mae Bullock, when she and her sister Alline got to know the members of Kings of Rhythm, an ensemble band led by Ike Turner.

Tina initially struck up a romance with the band's saxophone player Raymond Hill, while her sister began dating the band's drummer, Eugene Washington.

Tina became pregnant with Hill's child after a year of dating. She welcomed their son, originally named Raymond Craig Hill, on August 29, 1958.

In her 1986 autobiography, "I, Tina: My Life Story," the singer said that Hill had called things off and returned to his hometown in Mississippi before their son was born, leaving her to raise Raymond Craig as a single parent.

When she married again in 1962, Ike adopted the then-4-year-old, and he was renamed Craig Raymond Turner.

Craig died by suicide in 2018 at the age of 59

Tina told Oprah Winfrey in a 2005 interview that her eldest son was a "very emotional kid" and was attuned to the difficulties she faced in her marriage to Ike, which was physically abusive.

"He'd always look down in sadness," she said. "One day, when Ike was fighting me, Craig knocked on the door and said, 'Mother, are you all right?' I thought, 'Oh, please, don't beat me at home.' I didn't want my children to hear."

Craig served in the Navy after he graduated high school, and became an assistant booking agent. He later became a real-estate agent.

Craig died by suicide on July 3, 2018, one month before his 60th birthday.

In an interview with BBC News three months after his passing, Tina said that his death had shocked her as he had recently found a new girlfriend and seemed fulfilled in both his professional and personal life.

"I still don't know what took him to the edge," she said. "Because at that stage, he had said to me that he had never met a woman that he felt that way about."

Craig was cremated, and his ashes were spread in the ocean off the coast of California, something that Tina told her Instagram followers was her "saddest moment as a mother."

The singer shared one biological son with her musical partner and husband, Ike Turner

Tina and Ike's only biological son together, Ronnie Turner, was born on October 27, 1960.

In an interview with TV Week in 1989, Tina said that, as a youngster, Ronnie "was put through private schools and given allowances and clothes and everything you can give a kid" but was "determined to be self-destructive."

In a separate interview with Rolling Stone in 1986, she said that Ronnie was "very influenced by drugs" and she had cut him off financially. By 1997, she told Larry King that he had straightened himself out.

Ronnie followed his parents into music, and died from colon cancer in December 2022

Ronnie followed in his parent's footsteps and became a musician. He played bass guitar in the band Manufactured Funk. He also had a role in the 1993 film "What's Love Got to Do with It," a biopic about his mother.

He was married to the French singer Afida Turner, with whom he shared two children, making Tina a grandmother.

Ronnie died on December 8, 2022, just five months before his mother, because of complications of metastatic colon carcinoma, according to a report by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner.

Tina shared a tribute to her youngest son on Instagram the following day, writing: "Ronnie, you left the world far too early. In sorrow I close my eyes and think of you. My beloved son."

Tina was also an adoptive mother to Ike's children from a previous relationship: Ike Jr. and Michael

Before Ike and Tina began their relationship, Ike had fathered two sons with his girlfriend, Lorraine Taylor: Ike Turner Jr., born in 1958, and Michael Turner, born in 1960.

Both were infants when Tina married their father, and they all moved into a home together in St. Louis, Missouri.

Ike Jr. told the Mail on Sunday in 2018: "Tina raised me from the age of 2. She's the only mother I've ever known."

However, he said that by 1985, when he was in his mid-twenties, Tina had a distant relationship with her children, except Craig.

"I know she's busy, but I don't know why she hasn't called. I love her, she brought me up, she's my mother," he told Spin that year. "It kind of feels like she's neglecting us, at least us three, me, Michael, and Ronnie."

Ike Jr. is now in his mid-60s. In 2018, he said he hadn't spoken to his mother in over a decade

Like Ronnie, Ike Jr. also pursued a career in music after spending his adolescence touring with his parents.

"My father took me out of school at 13. I ended up running his recording studio, plus going on the road with them," he said in the same Mail on Sunday interview.

Although Ike Jr. worked with his parents as a sound engineer after they divorced in 1978 and pursued solo careers, he said that his father took extreme measures to keep his son's talents to himself.

"When my mother and father separated, he did not want me working with her — and he beat me in the head with a nickel-plated .45 pistol," he said.

Ike Jr.'s collaboration with his father earned him a Grammy Award in 2006. He received an accolade for the best traditional blues album for his father's "Risin' With The Blues," which he produced with Roger Nemour.

In the same interview, Ike Jr. said that he hadn't been in contact with his adoptive mother very much over the last 18 years.

"I haven't talked to my mother since God knows when — probably around 2000," he said. "My mother is living her life — she has a new husband, and she's in Europe. She doesn't want to have anything to do with the past."

Michael was in a convalescent home as of 2018

Ike Jr. told Spin that Michael had struggled to accept Tina and Ike's divorce when he was younger and was "hurt by their being apart." He said that Tina put Michael "in a nut house."

He added: "I didn't think he was crazy. They kept him in this place a long time. I thought he was normal. I don't know why she did that."

In an interview with Bobby Eaton in 2017, Ike Jr. said that Michael was using a wheelchair and had had "several strokes and seizures."

He also gave an update about Michael while speaking to Mail on Sunday a year later.

"Michael is in a convalescent home in Southern California and needs medical support," he shared. "I've been to see him quite a few times. He's doing great."