Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, she married the minister Marvin Gay Sr., after relocating to Washington, D.C., in her early twenties.
Alberta Williams Cooper was born on New Year's Day 1913 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
[2] She had three sisters, Pearl, Tolie and Zeola, and a brother, Aster,[3] but she endured a troubled childhood while growing up in North Carolina: her father once shot at her mother during an argument.
[4] Alberta told David Ritz that she felt she really did not have a father, and her family did not put her in a school until she was eight years old.
[4] The young couple first settled at an apartment located at 1617 First Street SW, only a few blocks from the Anacostia River.
However, Jeanne Gay said Michael Cooper had planned to move to Detroit before the alleged confrontation between father and son.
With her husband, she converted to the strict House of God, an eccentric Christian sect that took its teachings from Hebrew Pentecostalism.
She also said that her husband wasn't ready for children because he didn't understand how to treat them[6] and prior to her death, she told David Ritz that she had thought of leaving her husband many times before he shot Marvin, but had been unable to do so due to a lack of courage.
[11] Her daughter Jeanne stated her mother's strong beliefs in the House of God religion prevented her from divorcing her father.
"[12] In comparison to his volatile relationship with his father, Gaye said, "if it wasn't for Mother, who was always there to console me and praise my singing, I think I would have been one of those child suicide cases you read about in the papers.
[16][17][18] By 1979, Marvin had moved his belongings there and David Ritz interviewed him at the house that year as they worked on a biography.
[19] In October 1982, Alberta Gay was rushed to a hospital in Los Angeles after falling critically ill to a near-fatal kidney infection that required surgery.
Two days later, however, she posted a bond to bail him out of jail after his arrest for their son's murder, because she still sympathized with him and did not believe he should suffer any longer.
[27] Alberta struggled with bone cancer for the remainder of her life and was taken care of by her daughter Jeanne at her Burbank home.
In 1986, Alberta founded the Marvin P. Gaye Jr. Memorial Foundation in dedication to her son to help people with drug and alcohol problems.
[3] Before the memorial opened, however, she died on May 8, 1987, at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, after years of suffering from bone cancer, at the age of 74.