Introduction:
Paul Anka and the Hidden Cost of “My Way”: When Fame Replaced Family
Paul Anka built his career on love songs that promised devotion, destiny, and forever. Yet behind the melodies that defined romance for generations was a life marked by distance, absence, and difficult choices. Decades after his first marriage ended, Anka would admit something few expected from the man who wrote some of music’s most enduring love anthems: leaving was his decision, and it was one he still carried with him.
Anka’s rise was not gradual. Born in Ottawa to immigrant parents, he exploded into global fame at just sixteen with Diana, a song that transformed him overnight from a teenager into an international idol. While his peers were navigating adolescence, Anka was touring relentlessly, surrounded by screaming fans and adult expectations. As he later reflected, his teenage years effectively ended the moment success arrived.
When the British Invasion threatened to erase many early rock stars, Anka reinvented himself. He became one of the most powerful songwriters of his generation, penning My Way for Frank Sinatra, She’s a Lady for Tom Jones, and the iconic Tonight Show theme. Professionally, he survived where others disappeared. Personally, the cost was mounting.
In 1963, Anka married Anne de Zogheb, a successful model who gave up her career to build a family with him. They had five daughters and remained married for over three decades. But Anka was rarely home. Touring more than half the year, he later admitted that Anne carried the full weight of raising their children while he pursued creative immortality.
The marriage ended quietly but painfully in the 1990s. Anka publicly accepted responsibility, acknowledging that his devotion to music left little room for honesty at home. Anne never remarried, finding her own identity later in life as a respected art collector. Their daughters grew up with privilege, but also with an absence that no success could fill.
Subsequent marriages fared no better. Each followed a similar pattern — intensity, distance, collapse. By his seventies, Anka began speaking with rare clarity about the limits of fame. Greatness, he suggested, demands a kind of sacrifice that relationships often cannot survive.
Today, Paul Anka remains active, healthy, and creatively driven well into his eighties. His legacy is undeniable. His songs are timeless. But his story stands as a cautionary one. Success achieved “my way,” he has learned, can still leave empty chairs at the dinner table.
Paul Anka did everything right in his career. What he lost was time — and time, unlike fame, never returns.