Sonny and Cher met in 1962 when she was a 16-year-old high school dropout looking to launch a career in Hollywood, and he was a 27-year-old mover and shaker working for Phil Spector in a number of roles. They started dating soon after they met, and in 1963 Cher started working as a backup singer on Spector's productions - you can hear her harmonies on songs like "Be My Baby" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'."
Sonny and Cher first met at Aldo's Coffee Shop in Los Angeles, a hotspot for industry types that was next to the radio station KFWB. Cher's boyfriend at the time, a record promoter named Red Baldwin, arranged the meeting, hoping Sonny could help her career. But for Cher, it was love at first sight. In her autobiography The First Time, she described that first glimpse: "Everyone else in the room disappeared, just washed away into some fuzzy soft focus, like when Maria saw Tony at the dance in West Side Story." Sonny and Cher started living together in 1963 and had a private "wedding ceremony" in 1964, but they didn't officially wed until 1969. They separated in 1972 but didn't finalize their divorced until 1975.
They first recorded in 1964 as Caesar and Cleo, the name chosen because Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were the hot couple and starred together in the movie Cleopatra. Those recordings went nowhere, but in 1965 they released their first album as Sonny & Cher and had a #1 hit with "I Got You Babe."
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