Inside Steven Tyler and Daughter Liv Tyler's Complicated Family Tree
Liv Tyler assumed Todd Rundgren was her father, considering he was the man who signed her birth certificate when she was born in 1977.
More importantly, it's the role the musician played for the child, even after he and Liv's mom, model Bebe Buell, broke up.
“As the story goes, she called Todd and said she was pregnant and he asked her to come home to where they lived in Woodstock in upstate New York,” Liv recently said on pal Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson’s Sibling Revelry podcast. "He very courageously and lovingly said, ‘This child needs a father and I will be the father.'"
So when Liv found out that her biological father was actually Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, the emotions were sweeter for her than for Todd.
"The first wave was shock,” she said on Sibling Revelry, detailing how Bebe broke the news to her at an Aerosmith show. "After that concert, we went home and my mom had a chaise longue in front of a window. I remember sitting there for what felt like three days, but it was probably three hours, and coming to this conclusion of ‘Whoa, I have two dads and all this love.'"
For Todd, however, it's "probably still very hard and painful and I don't speak to him enough," Liv said. "I love him. I have brothers from him and I had a whole family with them. But I was a kid, so it was really hard because he was mad at my mom, and then suddenly Steven was there and we did a paternity test and it was positive, and so we moved to New York. I think I was 11 or 12."
And speaking of Todd's kids—the 76-year-old shares sons Rex and Randy with ex-girlfriend Karen Darvin and sons Rebop and Keoni with wife Michele Gray—Liv, 47, also has three half-siblings on Steven's side: Sisters Mia Tyler, 46, and Chelsea Tyler, 36, and brother Taj Tallarico (the rocker's real last name), 34.
Dream, er, read on for everything to know about Steve and Liv's sprawling family tree:
Steven Tyler's eldest child, Liv Tyler, didn't know she was his kid until her mom Bebe Buell brought her to an Aerosmith concert when she was 11 and revealed the truth.
The actress was born Liv Rundgren on July 1, 1977, her mom's off-and-on rocker boyfriend Todd Rundgren having stepped up and signed her birth certificate.
Steven found out about Liv around "Christmas of 1980" when he and Bebe reunited in Portland, Maine, according to his 2011 memoir Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?
She had gotten pregnant in Germany, the "Janie's Got a Gun" singer wrote, "and we’d somehow broken up after the tour. I guess I was in denial about it being my child, and she’d had just about enough of me and decided Todd Rundgren would be a better father. Bebe showed me pictures of baby Liv and we both cried before I went on.”
For Liv, perspective came with time.
"I have more empathy for my parents now,” Liv told the Daily Telegraph in 2008. "As a child I didn’t understand why that would happen, how that could happen. Everybody had a different interpretation and how they participated. And you know what—I’m OK with that. All that matters is whatever kind of relationship I can have with them now.”
And more time bred even more perspective.
"I’m so grateful to Todd for choosing to be a father figure to me," Liv told The Guardian in 2017. "It’s a big thing for a man to say, 'I know this kid might not be mine, but I still want to be her father.' Although he and my mom weren’t together, he was always a very stable, loving force in my life."
Finding out Steven was her biological father made sense, though. "I felt a connection in a very strong way when I met him as a little girl and I didn’t know why at first," she recalled, "but I figured it out rather quickly."
Looking back on her mom's choices, Liv noted that Bebe was only 23 when she had her.
"I think, ultimately, she was a bit overwhelmed, so she brought me to Maine to live with my aunt and uncle and cousins, and I would also live with my grandparents sometimes," Liv told The Guardian. "So I had a very family-rich childhood."
And when she met Steven, "It was fun getting to know his side of the family."
As for her two "unconventional fathers," both members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Liv compared Todd and Steven to "unicorns or wizards."
She explained," The way they think is just different. Their eccentricities have made me more practical and more normal, in a way."
Liv pursued show business as a Tyler, appearing with Alicia Silverstone in Aerosmith's 1993 "Crazy" video when she was 16 before she started cranking out movies like Stealing Beauty, Empire Records, That Thing You Do! and Armageddon.
Asked about his teenage daughter's saucy turn in the video, Steven told Rolling Stone in 1994 that he sat his kids down for frank discussions about sex, drugs and the ways of the world.
"As a father I’m a realist," he said. "You can teach your children well and hope you’ve taught them some good sense."
As for her own blended family, the Captain America: Brave New World actress shares son Milo William Langdon, Dec. 14, 2004, with musician ex-husband Royston Langdon, as well as son Sailor Gene Gardner, born Feb. 11, 2015, and daughter Lula Rose Gardner, born July 8, 2016, with former partner David Gardner.
“My favorite thing about being a parent is that I learn so much from the push-and-pull dynamic of mother and child,” Liv told More magazine in 2015. “Having children, I learned about my own strength.”
Which, she admitted, only extends so far. "As a parent, my fantasy is to cook every meal, read every story, do everything, and also work all day," she told The Guardian. "I'm overly hard on myself."
While Liv and Dave split up, they remain close coparents and the whole family, including his son Gray Gardner from a previous relationship and mom Emma Gardner, spent Christmas together in 2024.
Steven married model Cyrinda Foxe on Sept. 1, 1978, and they welcomed daughter Mia Abagale Tyler several months later, on Dec. 22.
Mia was 9 when she found out she had a half-sister—when Cyrinda (who divorced Steven in 1987) and Liv's mom Bebe happened to take their daughters to the same Aerosmith concert.
“And we were at this VIP area, outside of the green rooms,” she said in an April 2025 joint appearance with Liv on Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson’s Sibling Revelry podcast, “and we were just like, you know, doing our…9-year-old thing, and this fan lady came up and she was like, ‘Oh my god, you girls are so cute. Are you guys sisters?'”
Like her older sibling—"My sister Mia will just move her hand in a certain way and the mannerism is so like mine, it’s crazy," Liv told The Guardian—Mia also worked as a model and actress, but eventually found her passion in other forms of artistic expression.
"After I quit modeling I tried my hand at different jobs in the entertainment industry but still never felt content," the photographer told God Is In The TV in 2013. "It wasn’t until I got my hands on a real camera and started to play with it that I realized how much power I had in my grip."
Of her unconventional upbringing, "I was definitely born with cool parents that let me do what I wanted expressively," she said. "My mom wanted me to be a nun but we all knew at a very young age that that wasn’t going to happen. Having a famous person in your life allows doors to open that would normally be nailed shut. It’s how you decide to open the door and come through that makes you who you are."
Cyrinda—who had briefly been married to New York Dolls frontman David Johansen before she and Steven got hitched—married musician Keith Waa in 2002, shortly before her death from brain cancer at 50.
Mia was married to Papa Roach drummer Dave Buckner from 2002 until 2005.
She welcomed son Axton Joseph Tallarico (her father's real last name) on May 10, 2017, with then-boyfriend Dan Halen.
Mia is in a relationship now with Kill Devil Hill singer Dewey Bragg, writing on Instagram Feb. 27, 2025, "Thank you for being my best friend and my best love. And thank you for bonking me over the head and dragging me into your cave a year ago with just one kiss. To think it all started with a whistle 17 years ago and look at us now…. I love you in all the lives we’ve already lived & all of eternity."
Steven married Teresa Barrick on May 28, 1988, and they welcomed daughter Chelsea Anna Tyler (née Tallarico) on March 6, 1989.
Four years after being introduced by mutual friend Zoë Kravitz, Chelsea married actor Jon Foster in 2015 and together they formed the electronica-soul band Kaneholler.
"The 'working together' aspect and then the 'being in a relationship' aspect help each other a lot, which I didn’t really expect," Chelsea, who was attending art school and modeling when she met her husband, told Nylon in 2015. "With making music there’s no bulls--t. If you don’t like something you have to be able to be straight up, 'I don’t like that or I’m not comfortable doing that.' You have to be real."
She and Jon also joined forces to welcome son Vincent Frank Foster on Feb. 21, 2020, and daughter Isabella Rae Foster on March 14, 2022.
Steven and Teresa also share son Taj Monroe Tallarico, born Jan. 31, 1991.
The most private member of the family, he has one acting credit—a 2002 episode of Lizzie Maguire as "Bystander #2"—and not much of a social media presence.
But he married Brittany Reardon on Oct. 27, 2018, and makes the occasional cameo on other family members' Instagram pages.
Steven and Teresa divorced in 2006 and the rocker has been in a relationship with Aimee Preston since at least 2018.
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