Lost his first wife in childbirth. Friends had to organize a fund raiser to get Telemann out debt after the gambling habit of his second wife (whom he married when he was 33 and she was just 16) threatened to ruin him. They separated when she left him for another man, but never divorced. She joined a convent, and outlived him by 17 years.
Friends with George Frideric Handel, whom often sent Telemann, an amateur botanist, "botanical curiosities" from London.
None of Telemann's children became composers or musicians. However, grandson Georg Michael (April 20, 1748 - March 4, 1831), raised by Telemann after the death of Georg Michael's father in 1755, became a composer of some renown.