Joni Mitchell Was 'Hurt Like Hell' After Her Secret Pregnancy Became Public But It Led Her To Long-Lost Daughter

May 04, 2022 by apost team

Now decorated Canadian-American singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell was once a struggling art student without the means to support a family. When decades ago in 1964 she realized she was pregnant, Mitchell decided it was best to give the child to someone more capable of loving and caring for her, instead of trying to bring the baby up in the jostling, unpredictable world of folks singers. 

Mitchell had traveled to Toronto, partially to shield her family, and gave birth in a charity hospital. Complications kept Mitchell there for ten days, a period where she found she "kept trying to find some kind of circumstance where [she] could stay with her." But, the child’s father, Brad McGrath, seemed disinterested in supporting his partner and appeared to run away to California. Alone and a young, unwed woman, Mitchell found herself in a world unwelcoming to both her and her newborn. 

She hastily married fellow folk singer Chuck Mitchell in "a marriage of convenience." However, the union did not prove strong enough to provide the kind of home a child needs and Mitchell ended up giving the baby girl up for adoption shortly thereafter. However, Mitchell had by this point bonded with the newborn and found herself wondering after their separation about the baby’s health. Mitchell had contracted polio as a child and she hoped her daughter was strong. 

It would be thirty-two years before the mother and daughter, whom she named Kelly Dale Anderson, would reunite again, and only then would they have the opportunity to build the relationship they weren't able to form earlier. 

Few knew about the experience; however, Mitchell did allude to it in songs, like "Little Green," which she included in “Blue” (1971). She also wrote, "Chinese Cafe," for her album, “Wild Things,” (1982) in which Mitchell sings, "Your kids are coming up straight / My child's a stranger / I bore her / But I could not raise her." Clearly, Mitchell thought of Kelly Dale, but even as she rose to fame, Mitchell still struggled to find a place for a young child in her musician’s life. 

It wasn't until 1993 when an art school roommate of Mitchell’s sold the story of her pregnancy to a supermarket tabloid that the secret was revealed to the public. Mitchell commented in an interview that the betrayal of the magazine story had “hurt like hell,” but the resulting publicity did in a way result in mother and daughter finding each other again. At the time, Kelly Dale, who was renamed Kilauren Gibb, had been already searching for her birth mother. She was pregnant with her son, Marlin, at the time and her condition partially drove her to find the woman who would turn out to be none other than Joni Mitchell. 

Around the same time that the tabloid story broke, Kilauren had been told by her adoptive parents that she had been given up as a baby. Kilauren had then contacted the organization, Canada’s Children's Aid, in an effort to find her birth parents; however, Kilauren was placed on a waiting list and did not receive any material from them until 1997. 

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When the packet finally did arrive, Kilauren describes what was given as biographical information as “dates, heights, that they had musical talents,” adding, “It was the kind of brief descriptions you’d get for characters in a play.” 

Little did Kilauren know that those odd, innocuous details would match perfectly with all the info she found on the Joni Mitchell fansite, which she read at a friend’s prompting. Perusing Mitchell's biography, Kilauren thought, “‘Oh, my God! All these facts are matching. Mother had polio at 9, grandfather was in charge of a grocery business, grandmother was a teacher . . . Saskatchewan . . . boyfriend in art school.’ There were like 14 or 15 matches.” 

Unlike the “impostors came out of the woodwork” that Mitchell describes appearing after the tabloid story broke, Kilauren had relative proof that she might be the long, lost daughter. Additionally, Mitchell's manager said listening to Kilauren's voice "made his hair stand on end. He said it’s like you’re talking to the same person." After conferring with him, Kilauren flew to Los Angeles, bringing Marlin along to meet his grandmother. Afterward, Mitchell revealed, “Kilauren said I get to watch him grow up now.” 

For the longest time, Mitchell only had wayward memories of Kilauren that she described as bubbling up “at funny times, like when a friend’s child falls off a bike.” This time, Micthell gets to be present for Marlin’s childhood and experience all the memories to come. Mitchell expressed gratitude towards Kilauren's adoptive parents, saying, "I owe so much to them…They raised her very well.”

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