Whoopi Goldberg has spent five decades in the public eye, and somewhere in between EGOT wins and two decades of moderating “The View,” she got married three times. All three ended in divorce, and she’s been open about the fact that none of them fit her the way people expected marriage to fit a woman.
Her third and final husband was Lyle Trachtenberg, a union stagehand she was married to for about a year in the mid nineties. He’s the least documented of the three, but he’s part of a pattern that says a lot about how Goldberg approaches love: she tried the traditional route more than once, decided it wasn’t for her, and stopped apologizing for that a long time ago.
Here’s what’s actually known about each marriage, sourced from her own interviews and public record, not speculation.
Husband #1: Alvin Martin (1973 to 1979)
Goldberg’s first marriage happened when she was just 18. According to Parade, the pair reportedly met when Martin served as Goldberg’s drug counselor. They married in 1973, the same year their daughter Alexandrea, known as Alex, was born.
The marriage lasted six years before ending in divorce in 1979. Martin has stayed almost entirely out of the public eye since, and Goldberg rarely brings him up in interviews. Alex, meanwhile, went on to become an actress and producer, and she’s the only child Goldberg has.
This is the marriage most tied to Goldberg’s early adulthood, before she’d broken into comedy or film. She was a teenager raising a kid and figuring out a career at the same time, and it’s not hard to see why a marriage from that era wouldn’t survive contact with everything that came after.
Husband #2: David Claessen (1986 to 1988)
By the time Goldberg married her second husband, she was an Oscar nominated actress with “The Color Purple” behind her. David Claessen was a Dutch cinematographer, and the two were photographed together at premieres during their brief marriage.
They wed in 1986 and split in 1988, with no children together. Claessen’s career kept moving after the divorce. He’s credited on projects including 2005’s “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” and the 2013 TV series “The Hustle.” He went on to marry twice more, first to Karen Green from 1992 to 2002, then to author Taiye Selasi starting in 2013.
Two years is a short marriage even by celebrity standards, and there’s not much public record of what pulled Claessen and Goldberg apart. It’s the quietest of her three marriages, largely because it happened before social media turned every red carpet appearance into a headline.
Husband #3: Lyle Trachtenberg (1994 to 1995)
Goldberg’s last marriage was to Lyle Trachtenberg, a stagehand and organizer connected to IATSE, the union that represents behind the scenes film and theater crew. Unlike Claessen or Martin, Trachtenberg wasn’t part of the entertainment industry’s public facing side. He worked on productions rather than in front of the camera, which is part of why so little exists about him compared to Goldberg’s other exes.
The two married in October 1994 in a backyard ceremony at Goldberg’s Pacific Palisades home, with a guest list that included Richard Pryor, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, and Ray Liotta. The marriage didn’t last long. By early 1995 the couple was still appearing together publicly, including at the People’s Choice Awards that March, but they divorced later that year, closing out a marriage that lasted roughly twelve months.
Trachtenberg picked up a handful of “self” and background credits on projects like From Dusk Till Dawn and Full Tilt Boogie around the same period, likely tied to his crew work rather than any acting ambitions. Outside of his connection to Goldberg, he’s kept a low profile, and there’s no significant public record of what he’s done professionally since the mid nineties.
Table: Whoopi Goldberg’s Three Marriages at a Glance
| Husband | Married | Divorced | Length | Occupation |
| Alvin Martin | 1973 | 1979 | 6 years | Former counselor |
| David Claessen | 1986 | 1988 | 2 years | Cinematographer |
| Lyle Trachtenberg | 1994 | 1995 | About 1 year | Stagehand/union organizer |
The Relationships That Weren’t Marriages
Goldberg’s romantic history isn’t limited to husbands. She lived with playwright David Schein from 1980 to 1985, in between her first and second marriages. After Trachtenberg, she was in a long relationship with actor Frank Langella from 1995 to 2000, which lasted longer than any of her three actual marriages.
The most talked about relationship of her career, though, wasn’t a marriage at all. Goldberg and Ted Danson dated from 1992 to 1993, and their romance became a major tabloid story, partly because Danson was still married to someone else when it became public, and partly because of a widely criticized blackface bit Danson performed at a Friars Club roast that Goldberg had co-written. That relationship generated more headlines than her marriages combined, despite lasting barely a year.
Why Goldberg Stopped Getting Married
Goldberg has been consistent for years about why marriage stopped being something she wanted to repeat. Speaking to the New York Times Magazine in 2019, she explained the pressure she felt early on: “People expect you to have a boyfriend. They expect you to get married. So I kept trying to do that, but I didn’t want to share information with somebody else.”
She’s echoed that sentiment on “The View” more than once, including a 2023 exchange where she reacted to co-hosts discussing how painful divorce can be. Goldberg didn’t relate. She told her co-hosts she felt the opposite after each of her splits, saying she was “dancing and prancing around” once she was out of her marriage, and added that she was never meant to be married in the first place.
More recently, she’s framed her preference in blunter terms, telling her co-hosts on “The View” she likes what she called a hit and run, meaning she’s not interested in committed relationships at this stage of her life. It’s a far cry from someone chasing a fourth trip down the aisle, and honestly, after three marriages that each ended within a decade or less, it tracks.
FAQ
How many times has Whoopi Goldberg been married?
Three times. Her husbands were Alvin Martin (1973 to 1979), David Claessen (1986 to 1988), and Lyle Trachtenberg (1994 to 1995).
Who was Whoopi Goldberg’s last husband?
Lyle Trachtenberg, a stagehand and IATSE union organizer she was married to for about a year in the mid nineties.
Does Whoopi Goldberg have kids?
One daughter, Alexandrea “Alex” Martin, born in 1973 during her marriage to Alvin Martin.
Is Whoopi Goldberg currently married?
No. She has said publicly she has no interest in marrying again and prefers to remain unattached.
