How Jon Bon Jovi's Wife Helped Him Realize His 'Voice Was Broken'

When you're as astronomically famous as Jon Bon Jovi, you attract a lot of people who tell you exactly what you want to hear.

The singer's wife, Dorothea Hurley, doesn't fall into that category — in fact, she was the one who helped him realize he needed to seek help to rehabilitate his voice.

Bon Jovi's vocal woes became a hot topic during the band's 2022 tour, and the frontman reached a breaking point after the final show of the trek in Nashville. "I tried everything — everything — to be me on that stage," he tells UCR. "And I came off on that night in Nashville, and it was the last of the 15 shows. I was like, 'That was alright, that was pretty good. It was good. Audience is going crazy. It's good.' And the greatest truth teller of them all [my wife] said, 'It wasn't good.'"

It was a crushing blow for the bandleader. "I could make the crowd do what I want them to do. I happen to be Jon Bon Jovi, I know how to do it," he explains. "But son of a bitch, my voice was broken. And I had to go and seek someone out for something that's not commonplace in vocal surgery, and it was scary. So these last couple years have been that journey."

Watch Bon Jovi Discuss His Vocal Difficulties

Bon Jovi's Vocal Recovery and 2024 Return

Bon Jovi revealed at last month's Pollstar Live! conference that he had "major reconstructive surgery in my vocal cords ... I found a doctor in Philadelphia who did something called a medialization, because one of my cords was literally atrophied." Jefferson Health describes medialization as "a procedure in which the paralyzed vocal fold (vocal cord) is pushed to the middle so that the functioning vocal fold can close properly to regain normal vocal function and swallowing ability."

The singer's health journey will be featured in the upcoming four-part docuseries Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, which airs on April 26 on Hulu and internationally on Disney+. Bon Jovi will also release Forever, their 16th album and first since 2020's 2020, on June 7. The first single, "Legendary," is out now.