Martelly was born in Cote de Fer, the son of Gerard Martelly, a Shell Oil executive and Marie Madeleine Martelly ("née" De Pradines, b. 1931 – d. 21 October 2016). On his mother's side, his grandfather Auguste de Pradines was a troubadour who wrote comic protest songs against the 1915–34 United States occupation of Haiti. After graduating from high school at the Institution Saint Louis de Gonzague, Martelly enlisted in the Haitian Military Academy, but (according to Martelly) was expelled after impregnating the daughter of a general. In 1984, he moved to the United States, and worked in construction and briefly attended a community college in Miami. In 1986, after one semester, he divorced his first wife, an American citizen, and returned to Haiti just as Jean-Claude Duvalier, then president-for-life, was heading into exile. In 1987, Martelly returned to Miami with his then-girlfriend, Sophia Saint-Rémy, whom he later married in a small ceremony in Miami, Florida. They returned to Haiti in 1988.