Where is Rita Marley now?
Rita Marley currently lives in Miami, Florida after suffering a stroke in 2016. “I said to her, ‘You’ve worked all your life, and this is God’s way, as cruel as it might seem, of saying you need to just relax now,” her daughter told Rolling Stone in a 2021 profile. “The grave is not calling you, so I’m’a just make you chill.’ So that’s how we look at it.”
Cedella recalls seeing glimmers of the “fierce” woman she’s known. “I know when she’s watching too much YouTube because her [blood] pressure goes up,” Cedella recalled. “She was just watching something on Instagram about the flood in Jamaica for the storm that just passed. I had to tell her, ‘Mom, you have to stop watching this stuff because it’s not healthy.’ She thinks Trump doesn’t like black people, and she was very nervous about what she saw happening in America with the election.”
Rita Marley was responsible for much of Bob Marley’s estate and is the Founder and Chairperson of the Bob Marley Foundation, Bob Marley Museum, Tuff Gong International, and the Rita Marley Foundation.
Bob and Rita’s son Ziggy talked to People about how she impacted the film Bob Marley: One Love. “My mom is the backbone of everything. Without her, none of this would’ve been happening. My father’s career wouldn’t be what it is,” Ziggy told the publication. “They really complement each other in that way. You need someone like that by your side. You can’t do it alone. You could never do it alone.”