Lionel Richie will soon have a new grandchild — but he doesn’t want her calling him Grandpa.
“I’m Pop-Pop,” Richie, 74, told Entertainment Tonight in an interview published on Monday, January 29. “We don’t get the ‘grandpa.’ Yeah, that’s a little deep. Pop-Pop is where we’re going.”
Richie’s youngest child, Sofia Richie Grainge, announced last week that she and husband Elliot Grainge are expecting their first baby, a daughter, after tying the knot in April 2023. “I found out very, very early,” Richie Grainge, 25, told Vogue in an interview published on Thursday, January 25. “I was about four weeks pregnant. I was on a trip to Milan for fashion week, and I was going to the Prada show. I was doing a really quick 24-hour turnaround, and I felt terrible but didn’t think much of it. I thought it was jet lag.”
Richie Grainge decided to take a pregnancy test after she was “a few days late” on her period, adding that she and her husband, 30, had been “casually trying” since their wedding.
After the first test displayed a faint positive line, Grainge went out to buy more tests. Richie Grainge took three more, and they were all positive. “He was so excited, and we both cried,” Richie Grainge recalled. “It was crazy and overwhelming and so hard not to scream it from the rooftops. But knowing I was so early, I was so protective — even with my friends.”
Richie Grainge went on to say that she and her spouse told both sets of grandparents by telling them she’d gotten them gifts from Milan Fashion Week. Inside the boxes, she placed the positive pregnancy tests. “Watching their reaction go from like, ‘I’m about to get an expensive present’ to like, ‘I’m about to get a grandchild’ was really sweet,” she recalled.
Richie Grainge is the only daughter of Richie and ex-wife Diane Alexander, who also share son Miles, 29. Lionel also shares daughter Nicole Richie with ex-wife Brenda Harvey. He became a grandfather in 2008 when Nicole, 42, welcomed daughter Harlow, now 16, with Joel Madden, whom she wed in 2010. Nicole and Madden, 44, welcomed son Sparrow, now 14, in 2009.
“Lionel is absolutely thrilled for Sofia and Elliot. He was ecstatic when they told him and the family that they were expecting their first child,” an insider exclusively told Us Weekly of Lionel’s reaction to gaining another grandchild. “Sofia is Lionel’s youngest, and it was such a bittersweet moment for him, because he realizes his baby girl is all grown up and going to become a mom. He couldn’t hold back the tears.”
