Jill Tavelman married Phil Collins in 1984 and divorced him twelve years later, in a split that became famous for a rumor about a fax machine. This year, the two of them are working together again, on an auction of items from his stage career.
A striped tie Collins wore onstage in 1982 is one of the pieces going up for sale in London this November. The auction, run through Julien’s Auctions, benefits The King’s Trust and includes hundreds of items from what Tavelman has called their personal archives. She’s one of the people who helped decide what to include.
| Fast facts | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 9, 1956, in Los Angeles |
| Married | Phil Collins, August 1984, in Guildford |
| Daughter | Lily Collins, born 1989 |
| Divorced | Finalized December 1996 |
| Now | Runs Waverly on Doheny in West Hollywood |
Table of Contents
Meeting Phil Collins in Hollywood
Tavelman met Collins at the Rainbow Bar on the Sunset Strip in 1980. He was already Genesis’s singer and drummer, and about to launch a solo career. She was working as a schoolteacher in Los Angeles at the time.
They dated for four years before marrying in 1984 at Guildford Register Office in England, with a reception at his home where musician friends, Eric Clapton among them, played. Their daughter, Lily, was born in 1989, years before anyone knew her as the star of Emily in Paris. She grew up moving between London and Los Angeles while her father toured.
Why the Marriage Ended
Collins reconnected backstage with Lavinia Lang at a 1992 Genesis show in Los Angeles. He’d been engaged to Lang as a teenager, long before he married anyone. People magazine later reported that the two had an affair while Genesis was touring Germany.
By the summer of 1994, Tavelman and Collins were living apart. She told People that their five-year-old daughter hadn’t seen her father in two months, and kept saying, “I want my daddy.” Collins, known at the time as rock’s good guy in part for his charity work, told the press he was no longer in love with his wife. People also reported that he’d told her the marriage was over by fax rather than in person. Collins has disputed that specific detail for years. In a 2016 interview tied to his memoir, he said he’d treated her poorly at the time.
The divorce was finalized in December 1996. Collins reportedly paid Tavelman a settlement of around ยฃ17 million. She never remarried.
Life After the Divorce
Tavelman moved back to Los Angeles with Lily and spent the next two decades doing charity work, largely out of the public eye. In 2014, once her daughter was grown, she opened Waverly on Doheny, an antique shop in West Hollywood.
“I just didn’t understand the concept of throwing things away.”
She told The Hollywood Reporter that shoppers at estate sales tend to grab the silver and the china and leave everything else behind. At one sale, she watched buyers strip the stamps off old love letters and throw the letters themselves in the trash, and asked if she could take them instead. In 2016, she paid $12.4 million for a Beverly Hills house designed by architect John Elgin Woolf, mainly to keep it from being torn down.
Tavelman became a grandmother in January 2025, when Lily had a daughter.
Working With Phil Collins Again
Collins became an ambassador for The King’s Trust 40 years ago, after first serving as a trustee. Its 50th anniversary this year includes a T-shirt printed with his own artwork, and when it launched, the charity thanked Tavelman by name for helping put it together. She’s since appeared alongside Collins at a press event in London in April and a reception at Buckingham Palace in May.
In July 1985, she watched Collins perform at Wembley Stadium for Live Aid, then flew with him to Philadelphia by way of New York on Concorde so he could play the same show again that day. She still has the outfit from that day, and her own laminate from the tour.
The November auction runs through Julien’s Auctions in London, with proceeds going to The King’s Trust.
