While Tina Turner’s celebrity friends, including Cher, one of her closest ones, celebrate her life and legacy, the entertainment industry continues to mourn her passing. During an interview with Ari Melber on MSNBC’s The Beat on May 24, the 77-year-old singer talked openly about her deeper friendship with Turner.

First of all, Cher remarked about Tina, whom she visited frequently as her life drew to a close, “she fought this sickness for such a long time and she was so strong as you would think she would be. Then, in the end, I remember her telling me once, ‘I’m truly ready. Simply, I can’t stand it any longer.”

Cher opted to spend so much time with Tina in the days coming up to her passing because she wanted her to know that she wouldn’t be forgotten and that her legacy would last forever. She also stated that Tina was ‘having a good time’ and enjoying her life despite her illness and subsequent decline in health.

Tina Turner detailed her numerous life-threatening illnesses in her 2018 autobiography, My Love Story. She suffered high blood pressure, which finally led to kidney failure, and a stroke, which required her to relearn how to walk, and in 2016, she was identified as having intestine cancer.

In addition, Turner experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of her abusive marriage to Ike Turner (the two were married from 1962 to 1978). Tina quickly ended the relationship to start again in quest of a better life, and it was around this period that she grew close to Cher.

“She gave you a lot of strength as a woman. She undoubtedly inspired a lot of young people, but she occasionally gave me a lot of strength, and I did the same for her. Sincerely, I think we were the best of friends,” Cher remarked of her pal, who died on May 24 from natural causes.

“She might not have won every battle, but she fought every war,” Cher concluded. She continued by referring to Tina Turner as “one of the great artists of our generation” and asserting that “there was no one like her” and “no one who could even come close to what she was.”

In their many years as close friends, Cher and Tina Turner shared many happy memories and distinctive laughs. Cher recognized that she was in the presence of an icon the moment she first met her. When she first met Tina, she remarked, “I felt like the oxygen was kind of being sucked out of the hallway.”

Tina Turner gave Cher a very precious present before she passed away, as though she needed help remembering, to help her remember the life and legacy her friend is leaving behind. She described the present as a pair of “Tina Turner shoes,” which are her “big high heels.” Through the 1980s, Tina spread the popularity of heels.

Cher wasn’t the only famous person to pay homage to Tina Turner during the previous several days, of course. The whole entertainment sector has set aside time to commemorate the existence and passing of a legendary figure known as the “Queen of Rock & Roll.” Millions of individuals from all different backgrounds have been motivated by her story.

“I was aware that she was ill, without a doubt. When I visited her in the hospital in 2019 and we had our first encounter, she told me that she was genuinely prepared to leave this world.” When Turner passed away, Oprah Winfrey commented, “I expected that was going to be the last time I saw her.