Asha Bhosle met R.D. Burman for the first time after he heard her Marathi natya sangeet on the radio and asked her for an autograph. She described him as a thin man with thick glasses that had dropped out of Calcutta University. It wasn't long before they became more than just business partners; R.D. Burman, or Panchamda, encouraged Asha to try mixing jazz and cabaret influences into Indian music.
Rahul Deb Burman has been aware of Asha Bhosle's talent for creativity since the beginning of her career and encouraged her to break away from traditional playback singing styles by experimenting with jazz, cabaret, and fusion, which she found very easy to do and quickly became skilled in.
He was a reserved and bespectacled who had dropped out of university in Calcutta, and she fondly remembered making fun of him while he finished his studies, creating some light-hearted rivalry in the recording studio. The romantic liaison between Asha Bhosle and R.D.Burman became more personal, culminating in a marriage proposal from Panchamda.
In 1980, they got married. Before this marriage, R.D. had married Rita Patel in 1966; however, they had divorced in 1971. Asha Bhosle had got married to Ganpatrao Bhosle, who had been a secretary of Lata Mangeshkar, when she was 16 years old. After that marriage, Asha’s family had left her, and she had become a mother of three children.
Asha Bhosle and R.D. Burman’s connection was more than just professional as revealed in a 2025 podcast, Couple of Things, by RJ Anmol and Amrita Rao. The Do Lafzon Ki singer said, “He didn't even know that he was such a big music director. He made music, but he had no ego about it. People die for money, but if I gave him a diamond, he would say, 'What is this? A stone? Instead, get a good song recorded.' That record was more valuable to him than a diamond."
She also shared that they had personal nicknames for each other. Asha would refer to him as Pancham while he would refer to her as Babua or Bab.
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