Diane Cory is one of those names that sits in the background of rock history, tucked behind the roar of The Rolling Stones and the spotlight her former husband lived under for decades. She was the first wife of Bill Wyman, the band’s long-serving bassist, and their relationship began years before the world had heard of The Rolling Stones. While Bill became a household name, Diane took a different path — one of privacy, silence, and a life lived far from the cameras.
Who Is Diane Cory?
Diane Cory is best known as the first wife of English musician Bill Wyman, the man who anchored The Rolling Stones on bass from 1962 to 1993. Before the fame, the tours, and his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Diane was a young woman from South East London who caught his eye. She worked as a bank clerk at Barclays Bank in Millbank, London, spending her days preparing customer statements. What makes her story intriguing isn’t what she did in public — it’s how completely she withdrew from it. She never gave interviews, never chased publicity, and never traded on the famous surname she once shared. In a world where the ex-partners of celebrities often become tabloid fixtures, Diane Cory remains a genuine mystery, and that quiet dignity is much of why people are still curious about her.
Diane Cory’s Early Life and Family Background
Diane Cory grew up in an ordinary household in South East London, and her early family background points to a close, hard-working home rather than anything glamorous. According to accounts shared by Bill Wyman, the two first met when she was seventeen and living with her widower father and younger sister on Kirkdale Road in Upper Sydenham. Her father had raised both girls alone, which suggests a family that leaned on one another. Diane had dark, curly hair, a cheerful and warm personality, and a little Spanish heritage passed down through a grandparent. She was athletic too — a long-jump champion at school who played netball and followed Crystal Palace football. For anyone wanting the full picture, one detail frustrates: the names of her father and younger sister have never been made public, which keeps much of the Diane Cory family story out of reach.
How Diane Cory Met Bill Wyman
The story of how Diane Cory and Bill Wyman crossed paths feels charmingly of its era — the kind of meeting that belongs in a black-and-white film. As Wyman told it, he and a group of friends were having coffee on a balcony one evening when one of them pointed out some girls he knew. Bill admitted he liked the look of one of them, so the group invited the young women up to join them — and that is how he first got talking to Diane. The pair clicked, bonding over a shared love of Crystal Palace football and her sporty, energetic nature. Before long they were a couple, visiting her relatives around Dulwich, Beckenham, and Bromley, and spending evenings watching football or heading to The Three Tuns Hotel in Beckenham High Street, where they drank and played darts with friends. It was a slow-burning romance rather than a whirlwind, and eventually — after some tension between Diane and her father — she moved in with Bill at Blenheim Road.
The Wedding: Diane Cory and Bill Wyman’s Marriage
Diane Cory and Bill Wyman tied the knot on 24 October 1959, a date Wyman could never forget — it was his own birthday, marking his twenty-third year. The ceremony took place at St John’s Church in Penge, with Bill’s friend Albert Stone as best man. By his own admission, the couple had drifted into marriage after about eighteen months together, following the custom of so many friends who were pairing off and settling down. Nothing about it was dramatic; it felt like the natural next step. At the wedding, Diane was an eighteen-year-old bank clerk, and Bill was still years from picking up the bass that would define his career. Only about a year later he bought his first proper electric guitar on hire purchase — a Burns model costing £52 — a decision that would eventually change the course of both their lives, though neither could have known it then.
Diane Cory and Bill Wyman’s Son, Stephen Paul Wyman
The most significant chapter of Diane and Bill’s marriage arrived on 29 March 1962, when their only child, Stephen Paul Wyman, was born. Stephen holds a curious footnote in rock history as one of the earliest children born to a future Rolling Stone, arriving just months before his father auditioned for the band. He would later have a brief brush with music himself, working as a songwriter and keyboardist. In 1982 he contributed to the single “Ride On Baby,” released as part of his father’s solo output on A&M Records, handling co-writing and performance duties. His music career stayed modest, with few credits to his name, but his link to one of the most famous bands in history has kept it in circulation. Stephen is also the reason Diane’s story never faded entirely — as the mother of Bill Wyman’s firstborn, she remains woven into the family tree.
The Rolling Stones Fame and a Marriage Under Pressure
Bill Wyman’s audition for The Rolling Stones in December 1962 changed everything — and not for the better where his marriage was concerned. As the band’s popularity exploded through the mid-1960s, the relentless touring, the screaming crowds, and the temptations of sudden fame strained his home life. Wyman has been candid about this period, describing how he became almost “girl mad” during the band’s early success. In the 2019 documentary The Quiet One, he reflected on how his womanising through those chaotic years contributed directly to the breakdown of his first marriage. He has also admitted, bluntly, that the marriage “never really worked” because he had married for the wrong reasons. For Diane, who had signed up for a quiet life with a young bank clerk, being married to a globe-trotting rock star was a different existence entirely — and one that could not last.
Separation and Divorce
The cracks fame had opened eventually grew too wide to paper over, and Diane Cory and Bill Wyman separated in 1967, divorcing two years later in 1969. Their marriage lasted about a decade on paper, though the bond had frayed well before the paperwork caught up. One poignant detail stands out: Bill Wyman fought for and won custody of young Stephen, reportedly because he felt his former wife was struggling to care for the boy. Custody rulings favoured fathers far less often in that era, which makes the outcome notable. After the divorce, the two went in opposite directions. Bill stayed firmly in the public eye, while Diane chose to step back into the shadows and reclaim her privacy — a choice she has held to ever since.
Bill Wyman’s Family: The Perks Legacy
To understand Diane Cory’s place in the wider family, it helps to know the man she married — because “Bill Wyman” was never his real name. He was born William George Perks on 24 October 1936 at Lewisham Hospital in South London, one of six children in a working-class family. His father, William George Perks, was a bricklayer, and his mother was Kathleen May “Molly” Perks, née Jeffery. The family knew real hardship — Wyman has described a childhood scarred by poverty and shadowed by the Blitz. When Diane married into this family in 1959, she became a daughter-in-law to William Perks and Kathleen May Perks, though she was marrying a young man who had not yet taken the stage surname “Wyman.” Their son Stephen therefore carries the Perks bloodline, with William Perks as his grandfather — the thread that ties the whole family together, from the bricklayer grandfather to the Rolling Stones connection.
Where Is Diane Cory Now?
This is the question people ask most, and the honest answer is that nobody outside her private circle really knows. After her divorce from Bill Wyman was finalised in 1969, Diane Cory retreated from public life and has stayed out of the spotlight ever since. She has given no interviews, appeared in no documentaries, and made no headlines in the decades since. It isn’t even publicly confirmed whether she remarried, changed her name, or started a new family — she has kept her life to herself. In an age of oversharing, that level of privacy is rare, and it points to a woman with no interest in leveraging a brief brush with fame. So while fans keep searching for updates, Diane has done exactly what she set out to do: live quietly, on her own terms, well away from the noise.
Diane Cory’s Age
Diane Cory’s exact age is hard to pin down, because her date of birth has never been publicly recorded. The best we can do is work backwards from what’s known. Since she was an eighteen-year-old bank clerk when she married Bill Wyman on 24 October 1959, she was most likely born in 1940 or 1941 — placing her in her mid-eighties as of the mid-2020s. Treat that as a careful estimate rather than a confirmed figure, since without a birth record it can only be reasoned from the timeline of her marriage. Still, the details line up: she belongs to roughly the same generation as Wyman, born in October 1936, making her a few years his junior.
Diane Cory’s Net Worth
There is no reliable, verified information about Diane Cory’s net worth — anyone quoting a precise number is almost certainly guessing. Because she has lived privately for more than half a century, no credible financial records, businesses, or public assets have been tied to her name. Unlike her former husband, whose long career with The Rolling Stones and later Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings built real wealth, Diane never pursued a public career or cashed in on the famous surname. Any figures you find online deserve heavy scepticism; they tend to be invented to fill a gap rather than based on fact. Like nearly everything about her later life, her finances remain private.
FAQs
Who is Diane Cory?
Diane Cory is the first wife of Bill Wyman, the former bassist of The Rolling Stones. They married in 1959 and had one son together before divorcing in 1969.
Did Diane Cory and Bill Wyman have children?
Yes, the couple had one son, Stephen Paul Wyman, born on 29 March 1962. Bill Wyman later won custody of Stephen after the couple’s divorce.
Why did Diane Cory and Bill Wyman divorce?
The marriage broke down largely because of the pressures of Wyman’s sudden fame with The Rolling Stones, including his own admitted womanising. They separated in 1967 and divorced in 1969.
Is Diane Cory still alive today?
Her current status isn’t publicly known, as she has lived an intensely private life since the divorce. She has given no interviews and made no public appearances in decades.
What is Diane Cory’s net worth?
There is no verified information about Diane Cory’s net worth. Because she stepped away from public life entirely, no reliable financial details about her have been documented.
Conclusion
Diane Cory’s story is a refreshing counterpoint to the usual celebrity narrative. She was there at the start — before the fame, the fortune, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction — a young bank clerk from South East London who married a man on his birthday and started a family with him. When that world grew too big and too loud, she made the quiet, deliberate choice to walk away, and she has guarded that privacy ever since. While Bill Wyman married twice more and stayed in the public eye, Diane chose silence, becoming one of rock history’s most intriguing background figures. Her ties to Bill Wyman, their son Stephen Paul Wyman, and the wider Perks family will always keep her name in the record books — but the woman herself remains, by her own design, an enduring mystery.