Cher’s mother wanted to jail Sonny Bono because of their eleven-year age difference

Mom said to lock you up.

That was the mother of all mantras after Cher’s mother, Georgia Holt, discovered her underage daughter was living with Sonny Bono.

The new Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee – born Cheryl Sarkisian – was just 16 when she met the then 27-year-old Bono at a coffee shop. But before the iconic duo hit the big time with “I Got You Babe” in 1965, she was still more of a baby at the time.

“I lied,” Cher, 78, admitted in an interview with Anthony Mason on “CBS Sunday Morning” to promote “Cher: The Memoir,” out Tuesday, Nov. 19. ‘I lied to him a few times. I told him I was 18 and then someone said, ‘You know, I don’t think she’s 18.’

“So I said, ‘Okay, I’m not 18, but my birthday is next month’ – which was true – ‘and I’m turning 18.’ And then I was seventeen. And my mother told him she was going to put him in jail.”

Cher moved in with Bono as what was essentially a live-in housekeeper, with the agreement that she would cook and clean in exchange for her rent.

But it was hardly ‘love at first sight’ for the couple before they became the iconic music and TV duo who were married from 1969 to 1975.

“I thought it was like when Tony met Maria,” Cher said, referring to the star-crossed “West Side Story” couple. “I mean, everyone disappeared and it was just the two of us. But he didn’t like me.”

Bono was even blunt about that.

“He said, ‘You know, you can come stay with me.’ And I was like, ‘Okay,'” she recalled. ‘And he said, ‘No, no. I don’t find you particularly attractive.’ So I was angry and happy at the same time.”

However, the “Believe” singer is convinced that her relative youth was part of the connection between the two before they scored hits like “The Beat Goes On” and “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour” on CBS.

“He was a bit childish,” she said. ‘He had to be real with me, because I didn’t expect anything. I didn’t want money, I didn’t think about anything, you know. And all those other women his age wanted him to grow up.”

Cher goes on to give a specific example when she “just painted watercolors all day” with Bono.

“We tried to do it right,” she said. “And I don’t think those (older) ladies wanted to do that.”

And Bono – who died in a skiing accident in 1998 – was devastated that Cher became more of a woman than a girl. “I looked like his friend, and I was just a kid,” she said. “And the first time he saw me in a bathing suit, his jaw dropped. And his face was so sad.”

Now Cher prefers younger men, as she has been dating hip-hop producer Alexander ‘AE’ Edwards – 40 years her junior – since they met at Paris Fashion Week in 2022.

“When I was younger, boys my age didn’t like me,” she told the New York Times. “And as I got older, I stopped liking men my age.”