After months of speculation about what was really going on, the truth about what’s really going on with Nelly and Ashanti has been revealed.
TMZ has uncovered that Nelly and Ashanti have secretly been married for months.
The news didn’t come from Nelly and Ashanti themselves, but rather, public records that state that Nelly and Ashanti have been legally married since December 27, 2023.
Timeline of Nelly and Ashanti’s Marriage and Pregnancy
This news puts a lot of the pieces together for all of their fans.
The rumors of Nelly and Ashanti’s baby on the way started on December 3, 2023, when Nelly was seen holding Ashanti’s stomach during his Black and White Ball in St. Louis.
Now that we know their wedding date, that would’ve been just 24 days before they tied the knot.
But that’s not all to the story, because Ashanti recently spoke out that she didn’t even know she was pregnant yet at the Black and White Ball.
She told Entertainment Tonight that she was simply trying to adjust her dress in the video that went viral.
Ashanti Claimed She Didn’t Know She Was Pregnant
It was only a few weeks after the event that she realized she could be pregnant and took a test to confirm it.
This seems to line up pretty clearly with their wedding date …
Meaning that they must’ve gotten married almost immediately after finding out she was pregnant.
That being said, even if they are legally married, it sounds like Ashanti still has plans for a big wedding.
In her interview with Entertainment Tonight, which was released just one day before the news of Nelly and Ashanti’s marriage was leaked, she talked about their wedding plans.
And unless she was just trying to throw the press off from the fact that they were already secretly married, they are definitely planning on having a big wedding someday soon.
She shared that they’re going to have a wedding once the baby is born, and that it’s going to involve the beach and island life.
In the interview, she also talked about how she and Nelly were good at keeping their personal lives a secret.
In retrospect, it seems like a pretty obvious hint that they hadn’t revealed just quite everything about the status of their relationship.
Ashanti Reveals Telling Details About Engagement
But it didn’t stop her from talking about the details surrounding their engagement.
Although she didn’t specify when exactly the engagement happened, she did reveal some pretty telling moments.
She said that Nelly proposed to her at home, and that she was in her pajamas.
She explained that she was watching TV in bed when he proposed.
But one of the most telling details that she revealed is that all of her family happened to be in town when he proposed, so they could celebrate together.
Given the fact that we now know that Nelly and Ashanti were married on December 27, 2023, it seems pretty possible that he proposed around Christmas, if all of her family just happened to be in town when it happened.
Nelly Said ‘I Knew It’ When Ashanti Revealed She Was Pregnant
This would also mean that he proposed around the time that she found out she was pregnant.
In the interview, she explained that she found out she was pregnant while she was at his mom’s house.
Nelly was working, so Ashanti Facetimed him because she couldn’t wait to tell him.
She explained that Nelly’s response was “I knew it!”
Nelly’s Other Children
This isn’t Nelly’s first child.
He has two children that are biologically his with his ex-girlfriend, Chanetta Valentine.
His daughter, Chanelle, is 30, and his son, Cornell the third, is 25.
He also adopted his sister’s two kids after she tragically passed away on March 24, 2005.
She was just 31 years old at the time that she passed.
She suffered from leukemia, and was originally diagnosed on March 29, 2001.
Nelly’s Efforts To Help Save His Sister’s Life
She went into remission for a brief two years before eventually passing away just four years after her diagnosis.
Before she passed, she spent her last few years raising awareness for people of African-American descent to join the bone marrow donor registry.
Nelly put together multiple bone marrow and blood drives hoping to find a match for his sister to save her life, but tragically, he never did.
Instead, he took in her two children after her passing and raised them as his own.
Ashanti Revealed That Nelly Is a Great Dad
Nelly and his four children appeared on a reality show together documenting their family life, called Nellyville.
It premiered in 2014, just a year after his breakup with Ashanti.
It only had two seasons and 21 episodes before ultimately getting canceled, but it still provided an inside look into his home life as a father of four children.
Now, ten years later, he’ll be a father of five children any day now, and Ashanti had something to say about how she thinks he’ll be as a dad to her first child.
She revealed that he’s a great dad to his first four children, and even though they’re all grown, he prioritizes spending time with them whenever he can.
She said that she thinks that he’ll be more of the bad cop and she’ll be the good cop, because once Nelly tells his kids to do something one time, he better not have to tell them again.
What’s The Gender of Nelly and Ashanti’s Baby?
Although she revealed a lot of information about the baby and their relationship, she didn’t reveal the gender.
She explained that they know the gender, but that they wouldn’t be sharing it until the baby was here.
The interviewer attempted to get her to slip up, asking her if she was alluding to a mini Ashanti or a mini Nelly and even asking questions about what they plan to name the baby.
Ashanti kept her cool, though, explaining that they hadn’t decided on a name yet, because she felt a lot of pressure to have a unique name because of her own unique name.
Nelly and Ashanti’s Marriage Leaked
Neither Nelly nor Ashanti have spoken out about their marriage since the news was leaked by TMZ, although they are both famously private about their relationship.
By the time they announced their engagement in April, they had already secretly been married for four months.
This is both Nelly and Ashanti’s first marriage, although both had been in long-term relationships before, both with each other and with other people.
The two originally dated for almost ten years before breaking up for the last time in 2013, and in the Entertainment Tonight interview, the interviewer asked Ashanti about their final breakup.
She brought up just how crazy it would be to tell her ten years ago that she would get back together with Nelly and that they would be having a baby together.
Ashanti said that she never would’ve believed it, because once they had broken up for a final time, she thought she was done with him, and had no feelings left for him.
However, something changed when they accidentally reunited onstage in December 2022, and now we know that just a year later they would be married with a baby on the way.
She explained that she remembered when she talked to him again, she was shocked that she was starting to feel feelings for him again after not liking him for so long.
And now, eighteen months later with a baby on the way, it’s hard to imagine that the two were ever separated for as long as they were.
