After musing that she’s hoping to have a beach wedding with Nelly, Ashanti may already be Mrs. Haynes. The singer, 43, and rapper, 49, born Cornell Haynes Jr., have reportedly been married for the last six months.
Multiple outlets, including TMZ and People magazine, have confirmed that court documents show the pair were married on Dec. 27, 2023 — just three months after initially confirming they had reunited after a decade spent apart. While court documents do not specify the city where the couple tied the knot, they do show the marriage as becoming official in St. Louis, Nelly’s hometown.
In April, the Grammy Award-winning musicians revealed they were both engaged and expecting their first child together. As previously reported by theGrio, Ashanti first teased that she was expecting in a campaign video for Proov, the at-home fertility diagnostic company she and the rapper co-own with founder Amy Beckley, Ph.D. She later confirmed the pregnancy and announced the couple’s engagement in an interview with Essence magazine.
“This new year of my life is such a blessing full of love, hope, and anticipation,” the R&B singer-songwriter told the publication at the time. “Motherhood is something that I have looked forward to, and sharing this with my family, fiancé, and loyal fans, who have been so supportive of my career, is an amazing experience.”
This latest news arrives just days after Ashanti shared how Nelly proposed and gave insight into the kind of wedding they may be planning. She told Entertainment Tonight it was a lowkey “beautiful, intimate” proposal at home.
“I definitely had [on] one of his T-shirts and his boxers,” she said.
She doubled down on the fact that rekindling their romance was a total surprise to them both.
“Never in a million years did I think we would be here. Ten years ago – maybe yes – but after our breakup, you know, I didn’t even think we’d ever have a conversation again,” she continued. “I guess when you go through a breakup, for me personally, I kind of just shut that person out… It’s kinda like, ‘Okay, that chapter is closed,’ and you just move on, you know, and there’s nothing there.”
When Nelly confirmed the two had revived the relationship that made headlines in the early aughts, he explained to “Love and Hip-Hop”’s Rasheeda and Kirk Frost on the “Boss Moves with Rasheeda” show, “I think it surprised both of us.”
“It wasn’t anything that was planned,” he added.
With big plans now in the making, Ashanti and Nelly are clearly proponents of “circling the block”!