While in one part of the world many people are having a problem finding life partners or keeping one. In another, there are people that have married 9 times or even more and some of these people are able to maintain close to 100 partners all together at once.
Among the people that happen to be polygamous in nature, there are some that have done it citing a divine assignment, while others just do it because they can do it. Others still do it because they believe the grass is greener with the other person or in the next marriage. There are of course others that do it simply for love, or something like it, and others that do it for the money.
Meet 9 People That Have Married 9 Times and even More
1. Bello Maasaba
Ranking 7 on the list of men with the most children is this Nigerian, Bello Maasaba. A Muslim, the man has been married to 86 women whereas his religion only allowed for him to marry four.
When it was reported to the authorities that he had this large number of wives, the Emirate Council of Bida his hometown, scolded him and mandated him to divorce 82 of the women so as not to tarnish the image of the religion but he refused.
This was even after he was promised that the wives would be taken care of by the state Sharia Commission while the children would be taken care of by the welfare board.
On the 15th of September 2008, he was arrested and charged with insulting or exciting to contempt of religious creed, deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage. He was also accused of unlawfully keeping 86 women. His arrest was on the orders of the Niger state government.
While in detention, one of his wives who was a daughter of a former minister, Hajiya Hafusat Bello led the other wives and children to protest his arrest.
“Nobody in the family of baba is complaining; I have been married to baba for over 20 years with four children and without any problem and I can also tell you that none of us the wives or children is complaining or lacking anything,” she said. The man was later released.
At the time of his death in 2017, he had 130 wives, 7 of whom were pregnant, and 203 children.
See Also: 8 Crazy sexual traditions that you won’t believe are real
2. Warren Steed Jeffs
Just as with some other men that can’t stop marrying many women, there is a religious undertone to this. Warren Steed Jeffs is a religious leader and a preacher as well as the President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church).
Before he was arrested and jailed for life for two felony counts of child sexual assault, the man didn’t only marry many wives, but he encouraged his radical followers to also marry at least 3 women.
Warren got married to close to 80 wives who were all young women. He had a mansion where he kept all his wives among whom is a 15-year-old girl that had a child for him. 29 of his wives were his stepmothers as he inherited them from his father, Rulon Jeffs. 24 were under the age of 17, and 56 were sisters.
3. Saleh al-Sayeri
The case of this Saudi man became popular in 2005 when it was reported that he has married 50 women in 58 years. The interesting thing about this man is that he always has 4 wives at a time as permitted by Islam. For him to be able to marry newer wives he always divorces the last wife.
For his first three wives who at the time had been with him for between 18 to 40 years. He said they were the favorite ones and even though he loves to get married each year, he wasn’t going to divorce any of them to bring in new women.
From the unending marriage, the man had 10 sons and over 20 daughters. He wasn’t sure of the number of daughters he had or the names of all the wives he had married. Accused of treating women like clothes to be changed often, Saleh al-Sayeri said he has spent over a million dollars in marriage and divorce settlements. The last known person he married was a 14-year-old girl.
4. Joseph Smith
The founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith was married to as many as 40 wives. Some of them were also married to some of his friends.
His wives were said to be between the ages of 20 and 40. However, his youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball, was the daughter of his friend, who was only 14 years old when she got married to him. She was said to be bonded to him for eternity and that their relationship did not involve sexual relations.
The concept of eternal marriages was founded on the idea that the marriage could last beyond death and in such marriages, sexual relations were only permitted in the next life.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints founded by Joseph Smith currently boasts of over 15 million followers worldwide. Its headquarters is based in Utah.
5. Ziona Chana
Although there are families that are larger than that of Chana, he is regarded as the man with the largest family in the world. The north-eastern Indian family is made up of as much as close to 200 members including wives, children, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren.
Ziona Chana got married to 39 women. He tied the knot to his first wife when he was only 15, and that was in 1959. From then on, he continued marrying more women until 2004 when he married the last one at the age of 60. From these women, he got 94 children and 33 grandchildren. That, however, was as of 2011.
Born on July 21, 1945, Chana who is also known as the father of the largest family living houses his entire family in a 100-room, four-story house that is located in the hills of Baktwang village in the Indian state of Mizoram.
Chana ensures that the family lives in a communal manner and his wives take turns sharing his bed. There was a single year that he got married to 10 women. What is more interesting is that he is the head of a sect that believes a man can take as many wives as he pleases. The sect has up to four thousand followers.
As a result of the size of his family, each election season sees politicians visiting him to solicit the votes of his family.
6. Winston Blackmore
Regarded as “Canada’s best-known avowed polygamist”, Blackmore is a leader of a polygamous Mormon fundamentalist group. He was born on August 25, 1956, and by 2016, he had already had up to 25 wives and over 145 children.
Blackmore’s first wife is Jane Blackmore, he continued marrying more women in what is described in his religion as celestial marriages. Jane who was later divorced from Blackmore revealed that she grew up as a member of the church and it was a prophet of the church that revealed to her that she was to marry Winston Blackmore after her father took her to see the prophet.
Blackmore was arrested because of polygamy which is considered a crime in Canada. However, when he was found guilty of the charges in the country’s Supreme Court, together with another former Bishop of the sect like himself who also married many wives, James Oler, he insisted that he was only being persecuted for his religious beliefs.
See Also: Odd Couples: 10 Times People Got Married To Strange Things
7. Linda Wolfe
Born Linda Lou Taylor, Wolf came to be known as the most married woman in the world after she successfully married up to 23 men. She is also a serial divorcee, as she has successfully divorced all of them and was looking for a 24th husband. This was in 2009 when she was 68 years old.
Linda first got married in 1957 when she was 16 years old to George Scott who was 31 years old at the time. The marriage survived for 7 years before it ended. 22 men later, this was the most successful marriage that she would ever have.
On the list of the men she married were men of almost all kinds. She married a preacher, a convict who had an eye, two men that turned out to be homosexual, a wife beater, and so on. While 7 years was the longest time she spent in a marriage, the shortest was 36 hours. Interestingly, there was a man, Jack Gourley, to whom she got married 3 times.
Having spent a very long time without getting married, the serial bride revealed that she is missing walking down the aisle hence she was looking for the next man to marry
8. Liana Barrientos
If you had always thought only men make up the list of people that have married 9 times or more, you were really wrong. Different from most things you will ever see, Liana Barrientos is a serial bride who has married as many as 10 men in 11 years.
Now 42, the woman who has been nicknamed the “I do” fraudster didn’t marry all the men for the fun of it. Instead, she walked down the aisles in a migration scam that saw her marry all the men from different countries.
While most others on the list married for their insatiable desires or something else, she married to help the men get their green cards. Each of the marriages fetched her between $5,000 to $10,000 which she believed was better than stripping or selling drugs.
The Bronx bride began her marriage spree in 1999 when she married a man, Mohamed Gebril. By 2002, the two broke up and in that same year, she ended up marrying 5 times. During some of the marriages, she couldn’t even recall the complete names of the husbands. Laina Barrientos was arrested for marriage scams but she escaped from jail after 4 years.
See Also: Krishna Sen: This Woman Posed as Man, Marries Two Women for Dowry
9. Alistah Laishkochav
The father of actress, Keira Maguire Laishkochav is completely different from most men you will ever get to see. Alistah Laishkochav is a convicted cult leader, polygamist, and pedophile. He saw himself as some sort of a messiah.
Alistah Laishkochav married 9 women who bore him more than 60 children. Controlling his own exclusive cult known as the seaside sect at Bells Beach, Laishkochav was able to convert some people who joined his wives as members of the sect. The Cult leader always prowled through the house at night seeking out and molesting youngsters.
Born Ian Lowe, Laishkochav was a police officer before leaving. After marrying his 9 wives, they all became very faithful to him and took turns sleeping on his bed each night. However, he was involved in a case of domestic violence and child abuse in 1993, which led to his jailing and subsequent death.
