Courtney Love

Courtney Love met Cobain, on 12 January 1990, in Portland's Satyricon nightclub[65] when they both still led ardent underground rock bands.[66] Love made advances, but Cobain was evasive. Early in their interactions, Cobain broke off dates and ignored Love’s advances because he wasn’t sure he wanted a relationship. Cobain noted, "I was determined to be a bachelor for a few months [...] But I knew that I liked Courtney so much right away that it was a really hard struggle to stay away from her for so many months."[67] Courtney Love first saw Cobain perform in 1989 at a show in Portland, Oregon; they talked briefly after the show and Love developed a crush on him.[68]

Cobain was already aware of Love through her role in the 1987 film Straight to Hell. According to journalist Everett True, the pair were formally introduced at an L7 and Butthole Surfers concert in Los Angeles in May 1991.[69] In the weeks that followed, after learning from Dave Grohl that Cobain shared mutual interests with her, Love began pursuing Cobain. In the fall of 1991 the two were often together and bonded through drug use.[70]

  

Around the time of Nirvana's 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live, Love discovered that she was pregnant with Cobain's child. On 24 February 1992, a few days after the conclusion of Nirvana's Pacific Rim tour, Cobain and Love were married on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii. Love wore a satin and lace dress once owned by the actress Frances Farmer, and Cobain wore green pajamas, because he’d been "too lazy to put on a tux". In an interview with The Guardian, Love revealed the opposition to their

 marriage from various people: "Kim Gordon [of Sonic Youth] sits me down and says, 'If you marry him your life is not going to happen, it will destroy your life.' But I said, 'Whatever! I love him, and I want to be with him!'... It wasn't his fault. He wasn't trying to do that."[71] but the event created a media controversy for the couple. While Cobain and Love's romance had always been a media attraction, they found themselves hounded by tabloid reporters after the article was published, many wanting to know if Frances was addicted to drugs at birth. The Los Angeles County Department of Children's Services took the Cobains to court, claiming  

that the couple's drug usage made them unfit parents.[72] Two-week-old Frances Bean Cobain was ordered by the judge to be taken from their custody and placed with Courtney's sister Jamie for several weeks, after which the couple obtained custody in an exchange agreement to submit to urine tests and regular visits from a social worker. After months of legal wrangling, the couple were eventually granted full custody of their daughter.