John Mellencamp First Married at 17 Years Old

On The Howard Stern Show Wednesday morning, John Mellencamp and Howard Stern talked about Mellencamp's love life, and his first marriage... at 17 years old.

"How do you get married at 17, that's not even legal?" Robin Quivers asked.
"In Kentucky it is," Mellencamp said. "I walked out of school.

The girl I married was twenty-four. We got married, went home. She went back to her house, I went back to mine, and we didn't tell anybody."

A few weeks passed for Mellencamp as a newly-wed before the secret broke.

A small notice of his marriage was passed in the Courier Journal, and a passerby congratulated on his hush-hush wedlock. "It was a piece that if you were looking for, you couldn't find," Mellencamp said, but the news was out.

"I was trying to get out of the house," Mellencamp said about his motives. His parents were furious and unsupportive, though it was a good match for a while; the marriage lasted 7 years. Unfortunately, Mellencamp hasn't been so successful since.

The famed singer/songwriter has been married to three different women in the past.

"The first 40 pages of the script, I'm on," Mellencamp said about his romantic relationships. "The next 60 pages, I'm off book." His most recent split was with Meg Ryan, whom he was dating for three years.

John Mellencamp appeared on The Howard Stern Show to celebrate the release of his 22nd album, PLAIN SPOKEN. He will begin an 80 city U.S. tour starting in January.