When Cher and Val Kilmer dated in the early ’80s, they had special nicknames for one another.

Speaking with PEOPLE in 2020, the “Believe” singer opened up about her relationship with the Top Gun star, who died from pneumonia on Tuesday, April 1 at age 65.

“He never calls me Cher. He always calls me Ethel,” Cher, 78, said of Kilmer, whom she dated for a few years after meeting at a birthday party in the early ’80s.

The nicknames were in place so that the couple wouldn’t have to “yell” each other’s actual names.

“Val didn’t want to yell Cher, I didn’t want to yell Val, so we just called ourselves Sid and Ethel,” she continued. “And we also called ourselves one other thing, Vallus Maximus and Cherus Reprimandus.”

Vallus Maximus and Cherus Reprimandus were fitting to their relationship dynamic. “It means what it says. It was just kind of who I was in the household,” the Burlesque star said.

After the couple broke up, they still managed to remain friends — and Cher said they would keep in contact through “email” and “text.”

“We don’t see each other all that often. He always wants me to come down to his studio, but there
are a lot of people and I get embarrassed,” she said in 2020. “He always wants me to come and do something, and then I just go, ‘I can’t, Vallus, I just can’t.’ Or he’ll just say, ‘Cher, come
on.'”

Opening up about their relationship in 2021, Cher said their relationship was friendly first.

“We became friends because we laughed at the same things constantly. He would sleep over and it was just a friendship [at first],” she said, adding that things later turned romantic. “It went from madly in love and laughing hysterically to respecting each other’s ability.”

“We had unbelievable times and then put up with some times when they weren’t [that way] because we were both alpha males,” Cher added, alluding to the reason behind their breakup. “We were both individuals and neither of us was going to give up on that.”

After Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2015, Cher was a source of support for him and he even stayed in her guest home while his health was in decline.

“One night l suddenly awoke vomiting blood that covered the bed like a scene out of The Godfather. I prayed immediately, then called 911. Then alerted my hostess,” he wrote in his memoir in 2020. “Cher stepped in and stepped up.”

After Kilmer’s death was confirmed, Cher paid tribute to her late friend on social media.

“VALUS,” the superstar began an X post on April 2. “Will miss u.”

“U Were Funny, crazy, pain in the ass, GREAT FRIEND, kids [love] U,” continued Cher, noting that Kilmer was “brilliant” as Mark Twain, whom he portrayed in 2014’s Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn as well as the 2016 one-man play Mark Twain: Citizen Twain.

She concluded her post by noting he was “brave” during his “sickness.”