If there’s one group of people who have raised the collective eyebrow of society more than any other, it’s those singular iconoclasts who have chosen to buck social conventions and never marry — not even once. PART TWO.

This series, exclusively for SingularCity, takes a look at the few, the proud, the never-married, and how they illustrate throughout history, a life without marriage can bring singular satisfaction.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah was born to a teen mother and raised in indigence. She was 6 before she had her first pair of shoes. As a child, she wore potato sacks fashioned into dresses. She was raised by her stern but supportive grandma and honed her interview skills by using corncob dolls as subjects. And she has — by sheer will, incredible diligence and raw, hard work — created a $700 billion empire that spans television, stage, screen and print. Playing a role that spans being guru, therapist and shaman, Oprah cajoles, endears and enables her guests and her audience in what can only be considered the biggest group-therapy sessions (with shopping) in history. Oprah has a network of tight friendships that includes childhood friend Gayle King; a history of boyfriends like Roger Ebert and Danny Glover; and a current relationship with her long-time partner, educator Stedman Graham, with whom Oprah has chosen to share a “spiritual union.” In an interview in Essence magazine, she said of Stedman, “The truth of the matter is, had we gotten married we wouldn’t be together now, because in no way is this a traditional relationship.”

 

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was arguably the greatest composer who ever lived. German, beetle-browed and with flowing white hair, he composed music of breathtaking passion and depth. When he became deaf, inconceivably, he continued to compose, perform and conduct music. Beethoven was something of a rock star, as attractive to the empire-waisted women of his day as Kanye West is to those of today. Though besieged by female attention in the courts of Vienna where he lived most of his life, Beethoven was attached to only three women. The most famous and elusive love affair of his life took place with his “Immortal Beloved,” a woman who has never been identified. Beethoven wrote a series of letters to this unknown amour: “Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us — I can only live wholly with you or not at all …”

 

Simone de Beauvoir

As essentially French as existentialism and those long sticks of crusty bread, Simone de Beauvoir was a seismic force in feminism and, dare it be said, in the contemporary notion of polyamory. De Beauvoir believed that marriage was an “obscene bourgeois institution.” Born into a middle-class family in 1908, de Beauvoir soon distinguished herself with what her father termed “the brain of a man.” She graduated from high school, was accepted at the University of Paris, and soon met her long-time paramour, free-love consort and intellectual partner, Jean-Paul Sartre. The two were inseparable, in bed and out, except when each was having long, passionate affairs with other men, women or both. De Beauvoir famously said, “To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job,” and the only job she wanted was that of writer. In her lifetime, not only did de Beauvoir pen her groundbreaking feminist tome The Second Sex, but she also wrote philosophical works and several highly autobiographical, highly erotic novels, thus laying the groundwork for the writings of Erica Jong and Jessica Cutler. De Beauvoir had multiple lovers in the span of her 78-year life, but the 4-foot-11-inch existentialist philosopher Sartre was her main man. She claimed, “Our relationship was the greatest achievement of my life.”

 

Al Pacino

He may be the winner of an Oscar, a few Golden Globes, a BAFTA, an Emmy, a couple of Tonys and more; he may lay claim to the title of being one of the greatest living American actors; but most importantly, Al Pacino is unquestionably a legendary singular. His little black book reads like a Hollywood who’s who of actresses: Tuesday Weld, Ellen Barkin, Debra Winger, Diane Keaton, Jill Clayburgh, Beverly D’Angelo. Even Winona Ryder and Rose McGowan have been rumored to be attached to a much older, and more experienced, Pacino. While he’s never tied the knot with any of his paramours, he has fathered three children: a daughter by acting teacher Jan Tarrant and twins with D’Angelo, whose split from Pacino was famously acrimonious. Best known for his gruff roles with violent, macho tendencies, Pacino seems an unlikely romantic, and yet he has said, “I’m single and I don’t particularly like it.” His personal history seems to demonstrate otherwise. Rare is the Hollywood actor who has never taken a walk down the aisle; in tribute to Pacino’s lifestyle, never-marrieds everywhere can raise a glass of champagne and exclaim, “Booyeah!”

Next week: PART THREE of the Never Marrieds

Read Part 1 of this article