Cher – the “original cougar” – was out with friends celebrating her 40th birthday when she met Rob “Bagel Boy” Camilletti in May 1986. Camilletti was an aspiring actor, but his day job was working at a bagel shop. The pair began dating. The age gap: 18 years.
“You know, he was making bagels at the time. And I thought, ‘What will my friends say if I go out with him?’ But the more I got to know Robert, the less I cared what anybody thought. He may have talked like one of the Lords of Flatbush, but he had so many great qualities, I couldn’t believe it,” Cher revealed to New Woman magazine in 1988.
After they began dating, Camilletti benefited from a bit of favoritism, starring in Cher’s music video for I Found Someone. With her encouragement, Camilletti landed plum roles in Carnosaur 3: Primal Species, Roseanne, and NYPD Blue. Meanwhile, Cher had been lying low in her own career. But 1987 would see the release of The Witches of Eastwick, Suspect, and Moonstruck.
When 1986 rolled into ’87, Camilletti moved into Cher’s home. He accompanied her to the Oscars where she took home Best Actress for Moonstruck. The tabloids took aim. Camilletti'’s real name was hardly mentioned in reports about Cher, instead he was referred to simply as “Bagel Boy,” despite having left his job.
The seams on their relationship finally unraveled when Bagel Boy had a run-in with photographer Peter Brandt of Star magazine. Rumor had it that he and Cher were about to get married in a top-secret ceremony, and that Cher was pregnant. Brandt was camped outside of Cher’s home in July 1988, and Camilletti crashed into the photographer’s Honda, smashing his car and breaking his camera. Camilletti was arrested and charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon. (Cher posted $2,000 in bail.)
The couple dated from 1986 to 1989. The two broke up due to intense media scrutiny. “They were so mean with Robert – you know, ‘the bagel boy,’” Cher said in a 2010 Parade interview. Still, when the question of who her “one true love” was came up at a 2013 event, she responded, “Robert Camilletti.”
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