Madonna’s stepmother, Joan Clare Ciccone, has died at the age of 81.
Ciccone was married to the pop queen’s father, Silvio, for 58 years.
“Joan Clare Ciccone passed away peacefully early in the morning of September 24th, 2024, after a brief encounter with a very aggressive cancer,” an online obituary stated. “She will be terribly missed by her family and friends whose lives she enriched with her enthusiasm, joy and love.”
Madonna was 8 years old when Joan married her father in 1966. Three years earlier, in December 1963, her mother, also named Madonna, passed away at the age of 30.
Though Joan’s obituary stated she had “an instant family” after marry Silvio Ciccone, Madge, 66, had by her own account a difficult relationship with her stepmom as a child. In 2002, she told Larry King that she “sometimes suffered” during “moments of chaos” in her childhood.
“My mother died when I was little and that was difficult for me for a while,” she explained. “I mean truthfully, I didn’t accept my stepmother when I was growing up. In retrospect, I think that was really hard on her. She was [trying]… I’m very close to my father and I didn’t want to accept change in my life.”
Speaking with Rolling Stone in 2015, she said she had “no role model” to look up to as a child because she “didn’t have any relationship with Joan.”
Little is known about Joan and Madonna’s relationship over the past few years. But despite the Grammy winner’s comments about her stepmother that describe a distant relationship, she and Joan may have had a rapprochement of sorts. A video shared on Instagram by a Madonna fan account appears to show Joan greeting her step-daughter backstage during the Detroit stop on her MDNA tour in 2012.
Joan hugs the superstar and seems to say, “Thank you for a wonderful time.”
In another clip from that same night, Madonna tells her dad Silvio, who is with Joan, to “watch the whole show,” adding “artistic expression!” before they exit the backstage area.
Joan shared two children – daughter Jennifer, 56, and son Mario, 55 – and six step-children with Silvio. The couple had a son, Joey, who born in 1967 but passed shortly after due to a heart defect.
The Post has reached out to reps for Madonna.
This is a developing story…