Tina Turner says she felt a ‘soul’ connection when she met her husband

'He was 30 years old at the time and had the prettiest face.'

In HBO’s upcoming documentary titled Tina, music icon Tina Turner opens up about the moment she met her husband Erwin Bach and how it was love at first sight. 

Turner, 81, says she and the 65-year-old former music executive had an instant ‘soul’ connection when they met over 35 years ago. The couple didn’t get married until July 4, 2013.

“We met at Cologne [Bonn] Airport — actually it was Düsseldorf Airport [in Germany], and her manager Roger [Davies] asked me to pick up Tina,” Bach says the doc, PEOPLE reports. 

Read More: HBO Tina Turner documentary to debut in March

Turner adds, “He was [16 years] younger [than me]. He was 30 years old at the time and had the prettiest face. I mean, you cannot [describe] it. It was like insane. [I thought], ‘Where did he come from?’ He was really so good-looking. My heart [was beating fast] and it means that a soul has met, and my hands were shaking… So [my manager] Roger said to me, ‘Tina, you ride with Erwin,’ and I wanted to go, ‘Yay!’”

“We enjoyed the ride,” Bach says. “I enjoyed driving the artist, actually a superstar. You’re normally a little nervous, but I wasn’t nervous either. I was just doing the job.”

 Turner was previously married to Ike Turner, and she recounts their physically abusive 16-year marriage in Tina. 

“I had an abusive life,” Turner says. “There’s no other way to tell the story.” But practicing Buddhism, she says, “was a way out.”

“I started really seeing that I had to make a change,” the star continues. “[In the] divorce, I got nothing. No money, no house. So I said, ‘I’ll just take my name [that I rose to fame with].'”

As theGRIO previously reported, HBO Max is set to debut the film about the singer’s rise to fame, her personal and professional struggles, and the rebirth of her career as a global icon in the 1980s. It also will debut never-before-seen footage and audio, per a press release.

Read More: Tina Turner says ‘innate resilience’ helped her survive marriage with Ike

The synopsis for the doc reads:

From her early career as the queen of R&B to her record-breaking sell-out arena tours of the ’80s, Tina Turner draws back the curtain to invite us into her private world in a way she has never done before. Revealing her inner-most struggles, and sharing some of her most personal moments, ‘Tina’ is the defining and inspirational record of one of the greatest survivors in modern music.

Known as the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” this is not the first time Turner’s life story is being presented to audiences. Angela Bassett first played Turner in the 1993 feature, What’s Love Got to Do With It. In 2018, the Broadway play Tina: The Tina Turner Musical depicted the singer’s legacy and music.

What makes the documentary different is the never-before-seen archival footage that spans over 60 years of Turner’s life and career. It will also include interviews from Turner herself, Angela Bassett, Oprah Winfrey, and journalist Kurt Loder, who co-wrote the book about her life, I, Tina

Tina premieres Saturday on HBO and HBO Max.

*theGRIO’s Keydra Manns contributed to this report

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