Captured by : Pele marries again
AGENCIES
SAO PAULO
Brazilian football legend Pele married for the third time at a small ceremony in Sao Paulo on Saturday evening.
The 75-year former Santos star wed his girlfriend of six years in the coastal town of Guaruja. Pele and Marcia Cibele Aoki were due to marry two years ago, but they were forced to postpone the ceremony after he suffered a series of health problems.
The Brazil all-time leading goalscorer met the 50-year-old at a party in New York in the 1980s but only began dating when they pair bumped into each other in a lift in a Sao Paulo apartment block that they both lived in. Pele had three children with his first wife Rosimeri Cholbi who he was married to for 12 years and two with his second, gospel singer Assiria Nascimento, who he was with for 14 years.
Marcia, who is of Japanese origin, is the daughter of a paediatrician and a successful entrepreneur in her own right in the medical supplies sector. Marcia was in the middle of a split from her husband when the pair met again in 2008.
He said: “Two years later we met each other again in the same elevator.
“I said I was renovating my apartment and Marcia, who was separated by then, invited me to see a home renovation she’d done.”
Edson Cholbi, Pele’s son by his first wife, was sentenced to 33 years in prison in 2014 for money laundering raised from drug trafficking. The retired footballer, better known as Edinho, is currently appealing the sentence. He was first arrested in 2005 and has served a sentence for drug trafficking offences and links with a notorious drug dealer in the city of Santos.
