Andy Gibb’s Daughter Was Bullied for Drug Addict Dad Yet Wished to Be Close to Him after Mom Left Him

• Andy Gibb and Kim Reeder had an ugly public divorce before their daughter was born.
• As a child, Peta Weber's famous father "was just a guy on the end of the telephone line."
• Peta came to terms with her father's legacy in a beautiful way.

Andy Gibb married his high school sweetheart before he fell into the slipstream of his brothers' fame, as the Bee Gees. Unfortunately, their union broke apart before the birth of their only daughter.

Gibb met Kim Reeder at a dog show in his youth. His sister Lesley Gibb and her husband Keith Evans bred Staffordshire Bull Terriers, as did Reeder's family.

The future hitmaker spent his 18th birthday with the Reeder family and delighted in the gift they gave him, declaring it his best birthday ever. They look back on this time with the "old Andy" fondly.

A few months later, the young couple got married at the Wayside Chapel in Potts Point, Australia, on the afternoon of Sunday, July 11, 1976. Due to his brothers' fame, a press photographer was present when they walked out of the chapel smiling.

As a way of a proposal, Gibb had called Reeder, who he had dated for two years, at work and said they had to get married because he would not go to America without her.

He had gotten the call to join his brothers in the States and pursue a music career. He would later say that he "stumbled" into marriage.

The newlyweds packed their lives Down Under and relocated to America to be with Gibbs' brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice, and their respective spouses.

The party lifestyle they met there was not conducive to a healthy relationship, and Reeder threatened to leave many times. When she fell pregnant, she knew what she had to do. She explained:

"I just couldn't carry on with the responsibility of having a child and looking after him. So one day, when he was out of town, I left him."

They divorced on January 15, 1978, ten days before the birth of their child. The divorce was all over the papers, and Reeder experienced that the American divorce lawyers were pretending she did not have a child with Gibb. "Everyone thought, back then, that I was after money," she recalled, adding:

"They always think that. But it was the principle I was fighting for, not money."

"That's Your Dad:" Andy's Only Child Never Really Got to Know Him

"I didn't have the chance to get to know my father as well as I should have," Peta revealed in her first-ever interview about her father in March 2017. Before the exclusive, she pretended she did not have a well-known parent. She added:

"As I grew, I learned that he was famous and that he had famous siblings, but for me, he was just a guy on the end of the telephone line."

Though she knew that her father was a singer in America, she began to gage the extent of his fame when her mother called her into the TV room during "Solid Gold," the variety show Gibb hosted between 1980 and 1982. Reeder pointed to the TV and said, "That's your dad."

The Toddler found it "pretty confusing" to reconcile the man in the gold pants as someone significant to her, the person who called her "from time to time."

Reeder gave birth to Peta Jaye on January 25, 1978, after 40 difficult hours in labor. She was named after her obstetrician. Reeder's mother, Yvonne Reeder, said that her daughter was fortunate to have Peta, as the doctor said she almost did not make it.

The mom had returned to her home country with a newborn and many unresolved things with the "Shadow Dancing" star. "There were times when he thought I might have turned [our daughter] against him, but I never dreamed of doing that," Reeder insisted, adding, "I wanted her to love him." However, Reeder primarily dealt with her ex-husband through lawyers.

Growing up, the press occasionally made moves around Peta and her mother. After they were featured on the cover of an Australian gossip magazine, Peta refused to do press relating to her father.

She was bullied mercilessly at school, with children taunting her about the "(Love is) Thicker than Water" star's drug abuse and asking if she thought she was better than them.

"I wanted to be close to him... But outside forces conspired against us," she said. Once, her dad promised to introduce her to Michael J. Fox, a major heartthrob in the '80s, but this never came to be.

Why Did Peta's Life Turn Upside down When Her Dad Died at 30?

Gibb died of myocarditis in John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England, on March 10, 1988, shortly after his 30th birthday. Though she was only ten, Peta remembers the days after he father's death.

She had qualified at a district swim meet. The night before, she was excited about the event when a racket broke out in the house with the news of her father's passing. The adults in her life tried to keep a sense of normalcy by letting her still compete.

The press camped outside the swim meet and chased the family as they headed to the airport afterward. She was told, "Keep your head down, and if anyone calls out your name, look down."

With renewed interest, the bullying started up again, even worse. "It was torture," she remembers, and she had to deal with attention for the rest of her life.

She came to terms with this part of her family tree through a fantastic source, her cousin Sam Gibb, the daughter of Maurice Gibb. Sam got in touch about The Gibb Collective, a musical project by the children of the Gibb brothers.

Peta, who now goes by her married name Peta Weber and is an educational leader, mother, and wife, was featured on The Gibb Collective's first single in a group cover of "Please Don't Turn out the Lights." She also sang one of her father's lesser-known songs he wrote.