After months of talking about it—and changing her Twitter handle to “Mrs. Petty”—Nicki Minaj and her boo Kenneth Petty are now officially, for real-for real married. At least, according to the matching “bride” and “groom” accessories on her Instagram.
Nicki made the announcement in a somewhat understated fashion: a quick clip of matching “Mrs.” and “Mr.” coffee mugs sat beside “bride” and “groom” hats. She captioned the Monday night Instagram video, “Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty, 10.21.19.”
Barbz will have seen this coming for a minute: Minaj shared that she’d filed for a marriage license two months ago on her Queen Radio show (h/t People)—but, due to scheduling conflicts, wasn’t able to make it to the altar:
“We still had to pick it up and I was traveling, by the time I came back, we had to renew it again,” Minaj said. “From that time, you have 90 days to get married. That was about a week ago, so now I have about 80 days.”
Minaj and Petty dated less than a year, though she says they’ve known each other since they were teenagers. It’s been a whirlwind romance for the pair, with Petty making frequent appearances in Minaj’s social media feeds and occasionally popping up in her lyrics.
“He want me to be his wife, his MISSISS like SIPPI NOW” she wrote in December of last year, along with a picture of the pair doubled over in laughter. I guess love makes you say some foolish things!
The pair haven’t been without their share of scrutiny, though. Petty, a registered sex offender, was convicted of attempting to rape a girl at knifepoint when they were both teens. He also was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter in 2006.
Minaj has vehemently defended her man, at one point responding to an Instagram commenter: “He was 15, she was 16...in a relationship. But go awf Internet. y’all can’t run my life. Y’all can’t even run y’all own life. Thank you boo.”
Diehard Barbz will be pleased, at any rate, that Nicki’s nuptials won’t keep her from the studio. Minaj caused a stir last month after announcing that she would retire to start a family. The “Megatron” rapper tried to walk back the comments to the Shade Room in an interview posted last weekend, reassuring her fans she still had music in the pipeline.
“When I posted that retirement tweet, I knew that I still had music that I already had recorded that was still going to come out,” she said. So the retirement was kind of talking about my album, meaning like, ‘Do I want to go back and record my fifth album?’”
I’m not sure that explanation clears anything up, but the bottom line is, No retirement! But, until the album is done, Nicki’s fans might have to wait on images of Barbie walking down the aisle in a Fendi monogrammed wedding gown.
“I have to work on my album and I have a lot to focus on that I don’t want to do the big wedding now,” Minaj said on her Aug. 12 Queen Radio show. “We’ll do the big wedding later.”