When Lenny Kravitz stopped by TODAY Plaza in New York’s Rockefeller Center on Thursday, it was a special visit for more than one reason: Rockefeller Center is also the place where his parents met over sixty years ago.

“My parents were at Rockefeller Center, where they met at NBC, so I grew up surrounded by all these buildings in this great city and it’s always wonderful to be here,” Kravitz told Savannah Guthrie on stage at Citi Concert on September 12.

The 60-year-old singer also reflected on the loving tribute he paid to his late mother, Roxie Roker, at the MTV VMAs on September 11.

Kravitz won the award for best rock for “Human,” a song from his latest album “Blue Electric Light,” and dedicated the award to his mother.

“31 years ago, when I won Best Male Video, my mother was with me, and that was the last awards show — and the first awards show — she ever attended before she passed away,” he explained at TODAY Plaza. “That really meant a lot to me last night, and I dedicated it to my mother.”

Kravitz has previously spoken about his mother, who died in 1995, and his father, who died in 2005.

Read on to learn more about the musician’s parents, Roxie Roker and Sy Kravitz.

His mother played the lead role in “The Jeffersons”

Roxie Roker played Helen Willis in “The Jeffersons” during the eleven seasons of the sitcom, which ran from 1975 to 1985.

She played a black woman married to a white man, Tom Willis (Franklin cover), a groundbreaking story at a time when interracial relationships were rare on television.

Before her time on “The Jeffersons,” Roker studied acting in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and earned a degree in acting from Howard University, according to her obituary in the New York Times.

She also appeared in several off-Broadway shows and was nominated for a Tony in 1974 for her performance in “The River Niger.”

After “The Jeffersons,” Roker appeared in television series such as “Punky Brewster,” “A Different World,” and the miniseries “Roots.”

Lenny Kravitz talked about his mother’s relationship with fame and how it influenced his own path to fame.

“She was on ‘The Jeffersons.’ She was a grown woman, she knew who she was. All her values ​​were set,” he told Forbes in 2020. “And I learned so much about how to deal with that. Not so much in terms of people, but in terms of maintaining your character. She stayed who she was, she stayed humble.”

Kravitz also said that she did not live a life of luxury during her time on the show.

“I grew up and we had no maids, no housekeepers, no drivers, no assistants. We had none of that. My mother scrubbed her own toilet on Saturday mornings,” he said. “So I had that training.”

His parents married after meeting at NBC in New York City

Kravitz’s father, Sy Kravitz, was a journalist and television producer. He met Roxie Roker when he was working as an editor at NBC News, where she worked as a secretary.

If Roxie Roker’s last name sounds familiar, it’s no coincidence: She and TODAY’s Al Roker were second cousins, meaning their grandfathers were cousins.

“A lot of people confuse Lenny Kravitz and me, especially when he takes his shirt off,” Al joked on TODAY in 2020.

Roxie Roker and Sy Kravitz married in 1962 and had their only child, Lenny, two years later.

According to the New York Times, Sy Kravitz’s parents did not agree with the mixed marriage and did not attend the wedding.

The couple finally divorced in 1985.

Roxie Roker had a close bond with her son

Kravitz has often spoken about his close relationship with his mother, who died of breast cancer in 1995.

“I was a mama’s boy,” he told People in 2020. “She was a woman who never spoke badly about anyone, even if they deserved it. At her funeral, the late actor Brock Peters said, “If Roxie met the devil himself, she would say to him, ‘What a beautiful red suit.’ The whole place burst into laughter because The was my mother. She will find the positive thing to say or do in every situation.”

Kravitz has also said that he finds comfort in watching old episodes of The Jeffersons with his mother.

“I’m very glad she was on TV because when I feel like it, I turn on ‘The Jeffersons’ and watch her. It gives me so much,” he told People in February.

He added that his mother “still means everything” to him.

I probably feel her more since she left the planet,” he said.

Roker and Kravitz made a rare television appearance together on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1991, and their close bond was evident in the way they teased each other.

Roker teased her son about his fashion sense, saying that when he changed his hairstyle as a younger man, she said, “No, Lenny, you won’t do that, will you?”

She also teased her son for wearing his trademark sunglasses in the darkened studio.

“Come on, you can take off your glasses now,” she said, laughing.

Kravitz talks about his complicated relationship with his father

In his 2020 memoir, Let Love Rule, Kravitz opened up about some painful memories of his father.

According to the New York Times, he said his father kicked him out of the house for a while when he was 16.

He said that when he was about 19, he found out that his father had cheated on his mother. In the book, he recalled that his father told him about his infidelity, “You will do it too.”

“It was the most horrible thing he could have said,” he told the New York Times in 2020. “Those words hit me deeply. It made me Life “He said, ‘You’re going to do it too,’ grabbed his bag and walked out the front door. It couldn’t have been staged better.”

Kravitz also once spoke about being afraid of his father as a child.

“My father was ultimately a man who had a lot of love and sensitivity in him, but he was really tough,” he said on Oprah’s Master Class podcast in 2018. “An extremely strict disciplinarian. He wasn’t the type to talk a lot… I was scared of him as a kid.”

Kravitz said that in later years he found some peace in his relationship with his father.

He described a traumatic experience they had shortly before his father’s death in 2005.

“I think he had a spiritual awakening,” Kravitz told Piers Morgan on CNN in 2011, shortly before his death. “He made mistakes, he wished it wasn’t the way it was, he wished he could change it but didn’t know how. He just admitted it and it was beautiful, and from that moment on – he lived maybe another month – it was the best month of our lives and it made up for everything.”

He also said that writing his 2020 memoir helped him process his memories and feelings about his father.

“Even though we had reconciled before he died, I still held onto some things. And by writing the book and seeing my father as a character, as a man who operated with what he had,” he told Forbes, “I was able to see him completely without bias and see him as a man who was trying to find his way through this life.”