Joni Mitchell’s complex family life as she turns 82 after giving up daughter for adoption

In 1943, Joni was born to her parents, Myrtle Marguerite and William “Bill” Andrew Anderson. She is their only child, playing piano, ukulele, and guitar as a child. When Joni was nine years old, she contracted polio and was hospitalized for weeks. Myrtle and Bill were lifelong Canadians. Bill was a Royal Canadian Air Force flight lieutenant during World War II. Myrtle died in 2007 at the age of 95, while Bill died at 100 in 2012.

While living in Toronto, Canada, Joni met Charles Scott “Chuck” Mitchell, who was immediately attracted to the singer. She left Canada for the US with Chuck and the two began playing music together. At just 21-years-old, Joni married Chuck in his hometown in Michigan. The two divorced in early 1967, but Joni kept Chuck’s last name, officially becoming Joni Mitchell.

Before she met and married Chuck, Joni found out she was pregnant with her college ex-boyfriend. In February 1965, she gave birth to a baby girl. Three decades later, Joni told Vogue: “I had had a child, and I was broke, literally penniless. And I met Chuck Mitchell, and he said he would take us on. I was kind of railroaded…we were never suitable. I went down the aisle saying ‘I can get out of this.'”

A few weeks after Chuck and Joni married, she gave up her daughter for adoption.

After divorcing Chuck in 1967, Joni’s career blew up. She collaborated with many artists – Judy Collins, David Crosby, and Elliot Roberts just to name a few. Joni released her first studio album, Song to a Seagull, that year. While performing across the country, the folk singer also dated many artists. She was romantically linked to David, Leonard Cohen, and Graham Nash.

In 1971, Joni released Blue, an album named by Rolling Stone as the third best of all time. She moved to Laurel Canyon, California before selling the property and moving back to her home country. She’s owned a home in British Columbia since the ’70s.

The singer met Larry Klein in 1982 when he was a bassist on her Wild Things Run Fast album. The couple married two years later and were together for 12 years. While they divorced in 1994, they are still close friends. “I am grateful that I can tell her how important a teacher and force she has always been in my life,” Larry told The NewsHub in 2016.

32 years after putting her daughter up for adoption in 1965, Joni reunited with her. “It left a hole in me that I didn’t fill until the day I saw her again,” the singer told People of the adoption. Kilauren Gibb, who was born Kelly Dale Anderson, told The Toronto Star in 1997: “It’s kind of crazy. We met, and it clicked. It was like we never separated.”

In 2015, Joni suffered a brain aneurysm. The singer had to undergo daily rehabilitation and physical therapy. Since then, she has lived a very private life. Joni had to relearn how to walk and talk after the aneurysm. In 2020, the singer told The Guardian: “”Polio didn’t grab me like that, but the aneurysm took away a lot more, really. Took away my speech and my ability to walk. And, you know, I got my speech back quickly, but the walking I’m still struggling with.”

Since her aneurysm, Joni’s stage time has been few and far between. In 2022, she performed for the first time in nine years at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.