Graham Russell Wife Jodi Varble: Marriage Timeline, Kids, and Life Today Together
If you’re searching for “graham russell wife,” you’re usually trying to understand the woman who’s been beside the Air Supply co-founder through decades of touring, songwriting, and a career that never really slowed down. Graham Russell’s wife is Jodi Varble (often referred to as Jodi Russell), and their relationship has one of those surprisingly old-school beginnings—letters, patience, and connection built before instant access was a thing.
Who is Graham Russell?
Graham Russell is best known as the guitarist, songwriter, and co-founding half of Air Supply, the soft rock duo famous for massive hits like “All Out of Love” and “Lost in Love.” If you’ve ever heard an Air Supply ballad and thought, “Okay, who hurt you?”—there’s a good chance you were hearing Russell’s lyrical DNA at work. His writing style leans emotional, romantic, and dramatic in the best way: the kind of music that makes you feel something even if you swear you’re “not sentimental.”
That public identity—love songs, longing, heartbreak—often makes people curious about his real-life relationships. And that’s where the interest in his wife starts: fans want to know if the man who wrote all that yearning found something steady offstage.
Graham Russell’s wife: who is Jodi Varble?
Graham Russell’s wife is Jodi Varble, who has also been described publicly as a model and actress. She isn’t a celebrity in the same way he is, and she’s never been positioned as a “famous spouse” who needs constant spotlight. Instead, her name shows up in the context that matters: she’s the person Russell married, and the partner who has shared his life through an unusually long stretch of time.
In older media coverage around their wedding, Jodi was described as young, poised, and working in entertainment-adjacent circles—someone comfortable around the public world, but not necessarily trying to become the headline herself.
How Graham Russell met Jodi Varble
The story of how they met is refreshingly specific and almost cinematic. Jodi attended an Air Supply concert, and their introduction happened backstage afterward. Depending on which retelling you see, it’s often described as a lucky chain of events involving tickets and timing—one of those “right place, right night” encounters that actually turned into something real.
What makes their connection stand out is what happened next: instead of jumping immediately into a loud, public relationship, they kept in touch through correspondence over a long stretch. It wasn’t constant photo ops or public dates. It was the slower kind of building that relies on personality, curiosity, and the willingness to keep showing up on paper.
If you’ve ever had a relationship start through messages—where you learn someone’s mind before you fully learn their habits—then you already understand the appeal. It can feel safer and deeper at the same time, because the bond forms through words first.
When did Graham Russell and Jodi Varble get married?
Graham Russell and Jodi Varble married in 1986. Their wedding has been reported as a small, personal milestone rather than a flashy celebrity spectacle. It was also widely noted as Russell’s second marriage and Jodi’s first.
One charming detail that fans love: Russell Hitchcock (Air Supply’s lead singer and Russell’s longtime musical partner) was involved in the wedding day, reinforcing how closely intertwined Russell’s personal life and band life had become by that stage. When your career is built on constant travel, your bandmates often become a second family—so it tracks that his closest collaborator would be part of a major life moment.
The age gap people notice—and why it became part of the story
Because their marriage happened when Jodi was in her early twenties and Russell was in his mid-thirties, the age gap has been mentioned frequently in biographies and older write-ups. For some readers, it’s simply a trivia detail. For others, it’s a point of curiosity: how does a relationship with such a gap work long-term?
The most practical answer is also the simplest: longevity changes the conversation. Whatever anyone thinks about the numbers at the start, this relationship has lasted for decades, which suggests the partnership found a real rhythm that worked beyond the first headline.
And if you’ve ever watched couples navigate long marriages, you know it isn’t about impressing outsiders—it’s about building a daily life that doesn’t collapse under real-world pressure.
Jodi’s appearance in an Air Supply music video
If you’ve ever seen the music video for “Making Love Out of Nothing at All,” you may have unknowingly seen Jodi too. She has been associated with that video as Russell’s love interest, which is one of the rare places where their relationship brushes up against the band’s public visuals.
That detail matters because it shows how their worlds overlapped naturally. She wasn’t a distant figure hidden from his career. She was close enough to be present in the creative orbit, even if she didn’t turn it into her own public brand.
Graham Russell’s first wife: Linda
Before Jodi, Graham Russell married his high school sweetheart, Linda, in the late 1960s. That marriage produced two children: a son named Simon and a daughter named Samantha. The marriage ended in 1978.
This earlier chapter is worth mentioning because it helps you understand Russell’s timeline. Air Supply’s biggest wave of success grew in the late 1970s into the 1980s—exactly the era when his first marriage had ended and his professional life was exploding. In a lot of artists’ lives, that overlap (personal change + career pressure) becomes emotional fuel, and Russell’s songwriting from that period often carries the intensity of someone who knows love isn’t just a pretty idea.
Do Graham Russell and Jodi Varble have children?
Public biographies consistently emphasize Russell’s two children from his first marriage—Simon and Samantha—while details about children with Jodi are not commonly highlighted in mainstream summaries. If you’ve seen online pages confidently listing additional children, that information tends to vary from site to site.
The safest, clearest way to frame it is: Russell has two publicly documented children from his first marriage, and he and Jodi have kept much of their private family life out of the spotlight.
Where they live and what their private life is like
Graham Russell’s life today is often associated with Utah, a setting that makes sense if you picture someone who tours for a living but doesn’t necessarily want to live inside Hollywood noise. A quieter home base gives you room to write, reset, and live like a normal human between flights and sold-out shows.
That choice also matches the overall tone of Russell and Jodi’s relationship in public: visible enough to be real, private enough to stay protected. You don’t see constant, curated couple content. You see a long marriage that seems designed to function, not to perform.
What makes their marriage feel different from typical “rock star romance” stories
When people think of famous musicians, they often imagine chaotic personal lives—short marriages, dramatic breakups, or tabloid churn. Russell’s relationship with Jodi reads more like the opposite: a steady, durable partnership that grew alongside the career rather than being consumed by it.
A big reason this stands out is the nature of Air Supply itself. The band’s brand has always centered on romance—emotion, sincerity, and devotion. If the private life behind the music were constant scandal, it would feel jarring. Instead, Russell’s long marriage supports the public image without needing to be “sold” as part of the product.
And if you’ve ever been in a relationship with someone who works a demanding job, you know what that steadiness actually requires:
- Trust when travel and long separations are normal.
- Patience when schedules are unpredictable.
- Boundaries so the public never fully owns your private life.
- A shared understanding that real partnership is often quiet, not flashy.
You can’t prove any marriage is perfect from the outside, but you can see patterns. In this case, the pattern is longevity and privacy—two things that rarely coexist unless a couple is intentional.
Featured Image Source: https://www.ifaw.org/international/people/ambassadors/graham-russell
