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Unfazed, he called the report "completely untrue" and went on to talk about his Valentine's Day plans to be home with his wife and kid. "He didn't seem upset, hurt or caught off-guard," says Ricciuti. Instead he was chatty, funny and open, treating her query only as another empty rumor – "a silly question," she says. "I honestly don't think he knew anything."
Or was he doing what rock stars excel at: performing? Onstage late that night, Sambora delivered "his usual soulful playing," says a concertgoer with a backstage pass. Afterward he headed with the band straight to the Georgetown Ritz-Carlton, where they were "just hanging out" at the hotel bar, Degrees, says a witness. It was "low-key." Certainly he had a lot to think about.
As recently as a few weeks ago, he was assuring friends who had heard, as one puts it, "rumblings" of marital trouble that all was okay. "People were calling and asking [him] about it," says Kathy Dzielak, the entertainment editor of the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, who remembers native son Sambora since he was a teenager playing in a local band. "Richie told one friend that if his marriage was on the rocks, it looked like he was the last to know."
