Shannon Lee Tweed

Meet our Playmate of the Year 1982, Shannon Tweed— a Canadian beauty who went from being the farmer’s daughter to becoming a Playboy icon married to a rock legend. “I grew up on a mink farm in St. John’s, Newfoundland. It was very, very quiet,” recalls our tall Miss November 1981. “My parents separated when I was 13. My father and a friend went out one night to test-drive a new car. The driver of the car was drunk. They had an accident on a gravel road. The driver died and they found my father in a tree 24 hours later. He was unconscious in the hospital for almost a year. My mother couldn't keep up the mink farm herself, so she had to take her seven children and go home to Saskatchewan.” Shannon spent her formative years living in Saskatoon after her parents’ divorce, but she didn’t stay put for very long. “Then after high school, I went to Ottawa to become a lowly cocktail waitress and make bundles of money. I got to be Miss Ottawa, third runner-up for Miss Canada in 1978—I won the talent competition in that pageant as a singer,” proudly states the blue-eyed blonde. “People had mentioned modeling to me before. They'd come up to say, ‘You should model, you should model!’ So I went to an agency in Ottawa and they said, ‘You should model.’ I really had always wanted to be a Playmate. Every girl's fantasy is to be the most beautiful, desired woman in the world, at least for a month. That's what I hoped someday I could be.” Shannon began making waves in the Canadian fashion industry, having even posed for Vogue magazine, but she wanted to be considered the most beautiful model in the industry—she wanted to be a Playmate. Her hopes of being a Playmate were rejected—twice—by Playboy executives at the time, but she didn’t give up and the third time she came along with a camera crew. “There was a television program starting up here in town called Thrill of a Lifetime in Canada. What they needed were real-life people to tell what they had always wanted to do or be,” explains our Miss November 1981. “They got in touch with Playboy in Chicago, we did some more test shooting and I finally got accepted.” Winning Playmate of the Year 1982 not only meant that Miss Tweed would become the new proud owner of a 1982 Porsche 928 and of a $100,000 check, but she’d also be a frequent fixture on The Playboy Channel and at the Playboy Mansion. It was at the Mansion where Shannon’s life was forever changed when she was introduced to KISS frontman and bassist, Gene Simmons at a party. Like most Playboy fans, Gene couldn’t keep his eyes off Shannon’s beauty and her curvaceous body –and her country spunk sealed the deal. The two quickly became an item in 1983 and had two children, Nicholas and Sophie, who were featured on their own reality show, Gene Simmons Family Jewels. Gene—being the notorious bad boy he is—swore off marriage for years, a statement he made several times on his reality show which ran from 2006-2012. However, even The Demon couldn’t imagine life without our Miss 1982 and the two were married on October 1, 2011 after being together for almost 28 years.