It’s 1989, and a young rock star marries his sweetheart in Las Vegas. It may not sound like a promising beginning for a marriage, but Jon Bon Jovi and wife Dorothea Bongiovi will celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary this year, and will soon watch son Jake Bongiovi wed Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown to boot. The couple share four children including Jake.

In an interview with the UK’s Independent published Sunday, the rocker said that he and his wife have persevered thanks to having “a mutual admiration society, and being lucky enough to have grown up together.” He also admitted to missteps and dalliances in his marriage.

“These are all the wonderful clichés of rock stardom,” he said. “It’s about never lying about having been a saint, but not being a fool enough to fuck up the home life, either.”

In the upcoming Hulu docuseries, Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, which premieres on the streamer Friday, he details that late-’80s elopement, as reported by People.

“We were in Los Angeles, California, the band was on the road on the New Jersey tour, and if you opened up the curtains of my hotel room, there’s a big billboard of the five of us [Bon Jovi band members] staring into my window,” he said. “My girlfriend, who was my fiancée at the time, we had a night off, and I said, ‘I need a higher high—I got an idea. Let’s go to Vegas now.’ And she said, ‘Now?’ I said, ‘Now.’”

Their taxi driver was their witness, he said, and the union came as a surprise to many of the couple’s nearest and dearest.

“It shocked a lot of people—shocked about everybody: the band, management, agents, lawyers, parents, you name it,” he said. “It's a shame because it should have been a beautiful moment, but after we did it, people were trying to take it away, until I stood up and went, ‘Wait a minute, why are we living our life for anyone else?’ And 35 years later, we're still married.”

In the past several decades, however, there have been some parts of the cliché rockstar lifestyle that he’s cut out, like drugs. He told the Independent that after a bad experience in the past, he “had that sort of scared straight moment.” Now, he says, “the only thing that’s ever been up my nose is my finger.”

Soon, he and Dorothea will have another marriage to celebrate.

“I’m happy for him,” Bon Jovi said of his son. “They are two young people that are pursuing a dream together, so we’re supportive of it, because our hope for them—and Millie’s parents’ hope for them, because Bob and Kelly Brown, too, met when they were very young—is that the kids will grow together. Anything after that is out of all four of us as parents’ control, but they’re good kids. They’ll figure it out.”