Paolo Bonolis turns 60: five children, a grandson and a great love (Sonia Bruganelli)

Sixty years old without fanfare. Paolo Bonolis, whose television role would allow easy access to covers and spotlights, has decided to quietly celebrate the milestone of sixty, consistent with a reserve which, over the years, it has never given up. Bonolis, who between 1983 and 1988 was married to the American psychologist Diane Zoeller, mother of her two children, Stefano and Martina, has always tried to avoid gossip.

With his head down, he dedicated himself to a career among the most prolific of generalist television, cultivating his private relationships away from the cameras.

Laura Freddi, his fiancée in the nineties. Then, Sonia Bruganelli, married in 2002, the only one who helped him “build a bridge between these two worlds, between these two families”.

Bonolis, who with Bruganelli had their children Silvia, Davide and Adele, told in his autobiography, Because I was speaking to myself, how his first fatherhood came suddenly, when he was still too young to “give up my needs.” It was his new wife who allowed him to find his American children, Stefano and Martina, who had returned to the United States after their parents’ divorce. “Today, finally, we are close,” Bonolis explained to very true, recounting his son’s marriage to Candice Hansen. Stefano Bonolis got married in 2019, and in the same year Martina Bonolis got married, the first to make the TV face a grandfather. The girl, the eldest daughter of Bonolis and Zoeller, gave birth to Theodor on 18 October. But Bonolis, the birth of his grandson, kept it to himself. “I’m very happy, especially for her,” said the newly sixty year old, whose television career was the result of chance.

Bonolis, who would have moved to Mediaset in 1982, took his first steps in Rai, where he was welcomed for a twist of fate. He should have simply been a friend’s companion. Instead, the producers asked him to audition. In the end, there was an offer on the plate: 3,2,1… Contact!. «They gave me twelve million lire for a year. At the time, we didn’t sail in gold at home, so I didn’t hesitate », he later said, who from time to time goes back to saying that the time of television is over. Bonolis’ first goodbye to the small screen was given in 1998. «Honor [il mio contratto, ndr] for the three remaining seasons, but I learn a lot less. And then I withdraw. Why? I have been doing this job for seventeen years now, and instead you need to be fresh ”, he ruled then, unable to hang up the popular mask that has brought him so much criticism.

Bonolis’ programs have often been accused of being low and trashy. Vulgar, in a word. But the conductor, in front of the accusations, has always shrugged, aware, perhaps, of how malice lies only in the eye of the beholder. “I have done so many things: The meaning of life, Sanremo, the Verona Arena, the Expo gala, more stylish, thoughtful stuff, but if this alleged talent were to manifest itself only in those circumstances it would not be right. You have to know how to use it in a difficult thing like entertaining, riding a world that does not belong to me in which I fall with those rhythms », the eternal reply, repeatedly given to those who have supported his talent is wasted.