The singer is one of the new coaches on The Voice Australia.

Richard Marx is behind some of the greatest hits of the 1980s and 1990s.

He scored his first songwriting credit in 1984 with ‘What About Me?’ which was performed by country music legend Kenny Rogers.

The now 61-year-old released his self-titled debut album in 1987, which went triple-platinum.

Now, the ‘Right Here Waiting’ singer is joining Boyzone’s Ronan Keating, Australian singer-songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke and former Spice Girl Mel C on the judging panel for the 2025 season of The Voice Australia.

Here’s everything we know about the new The Voice coach Richard Marx.
Richard and his sons. (Credit: Instagram)

HOW RICHARD MARX BECAME THE KING OF LOVE BALLADS

Richard was born in Chicago in 1963. His mother Ruth was a singer and his father Dick was a jazz musician and the founder of a jingle company.

When he was just five years old, Richard began singing jingles for his father’s company.

When he was 17, Lionel Richie discovered a tape of him singing and thought he showed talent. He told the teenager that he couldn’t promise him anything but he should call him if he ever goes to LA. The next year, once he graduated from high school, Richard moved to LA and tracked Lionel down.

“It was my senior year of high school and he said you should come to LA and when you come out here look me up. He gave me his number,” he recalled on the Tamron Hall Show. “A year later I graduated and I blew off college. Went out to LA and he invited me out to the studio. He was making his first solo record and I sang on a song called ‘You Are.’”

“It was me and a couple other singers on that song …. that’s me going, ‘All night, all night,’” he told ABC Audio about his work with Lionel.

He went on to produce 14 number one singles as a songwriter and singer including the chart-topping hits ‘Right Here Waiting’, ‘Hazard’ and ‘Endless Summer Nights’.

Throughout his career, Richard has worked with the likes of Madonna, Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand, Cher, Justin Timberlake, Keith Urban, John Farnham and Olivia Newton-John.

INSIDE RICHARD MARX’S TWO MARRIAGES

In 1983, Richard met singer and actress Cynthia Rhodes on the set on Staying Alive. Cynthia was playing John Travolta’s character’s love interest in the film and Richard was working on the soundtrack.

They tied the knot in 1989 and had three sons — Brandon, 34, Lucas, 32 and Jessie, 31.

The couple separated in 2013, after 25 years of marriage.

While speaking to PEOPLE in 2014, Richard said he had nothing but respect for his ex-wife.

“What I will say is that I had the great fortune and blessing to not only be married to Cynthia for all those years, but to just share her company,” he told the publication. “There’s not a finer human being. I’m very grateful that we were together, had three amazing sons and I can’t say enough about what an amazing person she is and how lucky I was to share that time with her.”

After the separation, Richard invited Latina VJ Daisy Fuentes to one of his LA shows.

He told PEOPLE they had an “instant spark”.
Credit: Instagram.
“When I met Daisy, I was flailing a bit. I very quickly saw things in her that made me feel like, ‘That’s my person.’ But I was like, ‘Do I want to be in another relationship already?’ I had just become single for the first time in my life,” he said.

Daisy, who had also recently gone through a divorce, was concerned the relationship was going to turn into a rebound, so they stopped seeing each other for six months. When they reunited, they got to know each other as friends at first.

“We learned about each other as friends, and it only deepened our relationship so that when we started seeing each other again, we knew much more about each other,” he told PEOPLE. “We were intrigued by each other.”

The pair tied the knot in 2015.

“I really wanted her to be my family,” he says. “We ended up getting married for the only reason that really makes sense, which is no reason. There was no agenda.”