Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds and his wife, Nicole Pantenburg, officially announced their separation on Wednesday after seven years of marriage.
Edmonds and Patenburg released an statement to TMZ detailing their decision to split, referring to their immediate future as “new steps for the family.”
“After much thought and with great sadness,” their statement read, “we have decided to end our marriage. We continue to care and have respect for one another and share eternal love for our daughter and her well-being. We ask for personal privacy for ourselves and our daughter as we navigate these new steps as a family.”
What still remains unclear is what ultimately caused Edmonds and Pantenburg to separate. The couple got married in 2014 after dating for seven years, taking vows in front of various friends and family that included media mogul Oprah Winfrey.
They have one daughter together, Peyton Nicole, who is 12. Edmonds also has two sons, Brandon and Dylan, from his previous marriage to Tracey Edmonds.
It’s been a whirlwind year for the Edmonds clan, as theGrio previously reported. The music maker and his family all tested positive for COVID-19 in early 2020.
He shared in a statement at the time, “I tested positive for the Covid19 virus, as did my family. It’s an incredibly scary thing to go through my friends. I’m happy to report we have now tested negative and are on our way back to full health.”
Edmonds also made an appearance on The View and opened up about his experience with the virus, telling the co-hosts, “I immediately went to my studio and just kind of shut the studio down, and I hunkered down there just in case. And by that night, suddenly the fever came, body aches, chills, night sweats. Everything hit me, and the temperature was like 101 and above sometimes.”
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Edmonds used social media to bring people together, from his April 2020 Verzuz contest with Teddy Riley to his special Waiting to Exhale Instagram Live the following month.
Early in the days of Verzuz competitions, his match with Riley was deemed a success, earning over half a million viewers.
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