The Woman Behind Bill Cosby

Camille and Bill Cosby. Photo by Getty Images

Bill Cosby ended a 90-minute comedy set at the Atlantis Bahamas in Nassau on Thursday with a tribute to his longtime wife, Camille Cosby. Wearing a gray sweatsuit with the words “Hello Friend” across the shirt, the comedian held up his ring finger bearing his wedding band and said, to a cheering crowd, “Camille and I have been married for 50 years.”

It’s the first time since a slew of rape allegations have surfaced over the past few weeks that the 77-year-old has voluntarily referenced his wife of five decades. The latest in a line of seven women to speak out has been a registered nurse in West Palm Beach, Fla., named Therese Serignese, who says Cosby gave her three large pills and had sex with her after a stand-up show at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1976, when she was 19-years-old.

All the alleged instances of rape have been during his marriage to Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby, his wife since 1964. And Camille, notoriously private, has chosen to remain by Cosby’s side — out of what could be loyalty to her marriage, denial, PR pressure, finances, or any of many other personal reasons — a response seen with almost every celebrity infidelity scandal to hit the public spotlight. In 2009, two years after her husband John Edward’s infidelities became public, the late Elizabeth Edwards told Oprah that her marriage to the former U.S. senator was “perfect,” except for the cheating part. Silda Spitzer ended her marriage to New York governor Eliot Spitzer an entire five years after his notorious prostitution scandal. Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s marriage to her unfaithful husband, former U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner, is still going strong. And Hillary Clinton is married to Bill Clinton nearly 20 years after his affair with Monica Lewinsky went public.

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And while it’s only natural to contemplate why a woman would stay with her philandering husband, the wives can also become accidental victims in the process. As Jezebel smartly points out, “Blaming Camille for not doing enough, not reacting enough, not publicly distancing herself from her husband in the face of horrifying accusations isn’t the same as blaming his alleged victims for what they say happened to them. But passing negative judgment on the actions of a celebrity’s partner—who did nothing wrong…..are two sides of the same coin. If it’s not okay to blame the victims for what was done to them, then it’s also not okay to blame the rest of the fallout’s collateral damage on anybody but Bill Cosby.”

So who knows why Camille stayed? The couple met on a blind date in the early 1960s while Camille, then only 19, was studying at the University of Maryland, and Bill, 26, was doing stand-up in Washington DC. When they decided to marry, Camille dropped out of college and bore Bill’s five children (the couple’s 27-year-old son Ennis was tragically murdered in 1997 during an attempted robbery). As a result of her stunted education, she’s said she never felt confident until she returned to school in her 30s. “I got my master’s, then decided to get my doctoral degree,” Camille told Oprah in 2010. “Education helped me to come out of myself, to come out of the home, because I had been raising my children. Not that that is a bad thing; it is the most difficult job I have ever had. But that was just one part of my womanness. I had to fulfill myself in other ways, to pursue my interests, to know that I could do many things.”

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Camille also told Oprah that she never felt smart during the early years of her marriage to Bill, especially when the couple was socializing. “I always said, ‘My husband is the public person. He is the one who has something to say.’ I never felt I had anything to contribute, something that people would want to hear,” she said. Camille also shared that when it came to handling instant fame, she had a zero tolerance for “nonsense” and the need to please others went “out the window.”

All these factors could explain the question on everyone’s mind, but the truth is probably more complicated than we will ever know.

"For many couples, infidelity is not a deal breaker. However, we have to make a distinction between cheating and acts of violence against women," Dr. Paul Hokemeyer, a marriage and family therapist based in New York City, tells Yahoo Parenting. “That’s why it’s more difficult for the public to accept that Camille appears to be standing by her husband.”

He adds that women are a lot more likely to accept that their husbands have betrayed them when they’ve found the evidence themselves. “Camille can either believe a group of strangers or her husband, who she has loved for 50 years,” says Hokemeyer. “It’s also easier for some people to believe a loved one when the offensive is so profound. People who have been cheated on often rationalize and minimize the offense to protect themselves emotionally.”