How Did Robert Redford Meet His Wife, Sibylle Szaggars?
Robert Redford, who died on Sept. 16, is survived by his second wife, Sibylle Szaggars. Redford and Szaggars had a largely private relationship, but often stepped out in support of environmental causes. The actor admitted that part of what drew him to Szaggars was her relative lack of knowledge about him.
Robert Redford met his wife, Sibylle Szaggars, in 1996
Szaggars is a German visual artist who met Redford at his Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah. She traveled there with friends to ski. Redford invited her group to dinner with him, which sparked panic in Szaggars. While she was aware he was an actor, she was not all that familiar with his work.
“Oh my God, I don’t know any of his films,” she recalled thinking, per People.
She said she’d seen Jeremiah Johnson and Barefoot in the Park, but felt she should be more familiar with his work before having dinner with him. Szaggars rented a handful of movies from reception and watched roughly 15 minutes of each of them as research.
“I thought, ‘What if he wants to talk about his movies?’” she said. “I have no idea — that would be so embarrassing. I probably would have mixed everything.”
Luckily for her, though, Redford didn’t bring up any of his movies.
“Of course, he did not talk about it so I was rescued and saved,” she said.
In the end, her unfamiliarity with his work as an actor worked in her favor. Redford said he liked this about Szaggars. He said he “didn’t have to worry about any agenda.”
“It was a wonderful beginning of a relationship, because it began as two human beings meeting each other and finding a connection as two human beings, rather than being colored by success,” he said.
The couple married in 2009.
They were environmental activists
Redford and Szaggars shared a deep interest in environmental causes. Szaggars founded a nonprofit called The Way of Water in 2015, and Redford served as the vice president. Redford felt passionately about the environment for much of his career.
“I was attending a conference in Denver, in 1989, where there was a presentation by two scientists who explained Earth’s temperatures were rising — they called it global warming,” he told Rolling Stone. “They explained what would happen if we ignored this threat. That moment was my wake-up call. I knew they were speaking the truth. Because one thing we’ve learned is that time waits for no one. I realized that when there’s something you have to do, you better act, and act quickly.”
Robert Redford married his first wife in 1958
Before marrying Szaggars, Redford was in a relationship with his first wife, Lola Van Wagenen. They married in 1958, before his acting career took off.
The couple’s first child died of sudden infant death syndrome in 1959. They went on to welcome three more children before divorcing in 1985.
“It was mutual and it was right to move on. We still have great love, great affection, great friendship,” he told The Telegraph. “It is wonderful, and I think we probably deserve credit for it because the kids are great, they came through it OK.”
