Baudo's ex-girlfriend: "Pippo wanted to marry me and have five children. I was young and I left him. It was a crazy love story."
"It was a crazy love story. Pippo wanted to marry me, he wanted five children, but I was too young and in the end I left him." In tomorrow's issue, the weekly magazine Oggi interviews actress Adriana Russo , who retraces her magical year with Pippo Baudo, their meeting at an art exhibition, their intense courtship, their first kiss in a white Fiat 500, the steamy intimacy and the rapid evolution of the relationship, up until the final twist on the eve of the wedding, when she decided to throw it all away . Latest photos | photos | videos | video 1 | Images from the chapel of rest | Heather Parisi's video
The cover of Oggi on newsstands 
HE ASKED MY FATHER FOR MY HANDS - It was 1981, but important relationships are never forgotten, and Adriana Russo told the weekly magazine Oggi: "We were in love, but Pippo was overcome by an inexplicable frenzy. He went to my father and asked for my hand in marriage. He wanted to take me to live in his villa in Morlupo, to make me the mother of his children. And let's be clear, he didn't want two children, but five. He was in a hurry, as if he were in a great hurry. After less than a year together, since he hadn't yet divorced his first wife, he had planned the wedding in Las Vegas. It was then, faced with the big step, that I was scared and backed out."
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I WASN'T READY - Adriana Russo learned of the presenter's death at his home on the outskirts of Rome. She mourned him while walking through the Roman countryside, but she didn't feel like going into the city to say her last goodbyes. She told Oggi: "Pippo, I told him, you're rushing too much, but he insisted, 'I'll marry you, I'll marry you, come with me to Morlupo, I'll throw away the key and we'll stay there.'" Adriana says she initially felt like a fairytale princess, but then, faced with marriage, she admits she was afraid. "I wasn't ready," she told Oggi, "I was too young, that's all, and I loved my freedom. I didn't feel like living 40 kilometers from Rome, far from my friends, a housewife and mother."
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There was something else that alarmed the actress: "He was morbidly jealous," she explains in the interview, "and I had the feeling he wanted to isolate me. I told him through tears that I didn't feel like marrying him, and he took it terribly. It was as if he didn't believe it, as if he didn't understand, but I was adamant, and at a certain point I saw him cry." Adriana Russo concludes: "At the time, I felt like I was paying an exorbitant price. Today, in hindsight, I say I was wrong. It was a pure love story, and if it had remained a secret, lived step by step, without haste, perhaps it would have lasted until today."
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