Gossip is like a game of telephone and by the time the information gets to the receiving end of the line, it's been so distorted and misquoted that the original message gets lost, and this can be especially true when it comes to matters of the heart. Social media takes "he said, she said" to a whole new level, and we're now living in a world where we need screenshots and receipts.
Addressing rumors in a relationship can mean having some tough conversations and Adrienne Houghton says she experienced this firsthand before her marrying her husband, Israel. The couple, who will celebrate three years of marriage in November, faced a multitude of backlash after making their relationship public in 2016, only months after Israel's tumultuous divorce and infidelity scandal with his ex-wife of 20 years. Recently, Adrienne opened up about what really went on behind the scenes between their highly-publicized courtship.
In a recent episode of The Real, Adrienne explained that after reading the tabloids, she, too, was shooketh by the accusation that she was dating a married man and made it a point to clarify this conundrum with a quickness. She explained:
"Thank God for the internet these days. Things get confusing, and you get to clarify, like me, when I first started dating my husband, people thought he was married."
Adrienne and Israel have both been adamant about the fact that their relationship was strictly platonic before Israel's divorce, even setting each other up on dates with mutual friends. While the two maintain that Israel's marriage had ended long before their relationship, the tabloids told a different story. During this time, Adrienne says that she was just as confused as the rest of us and decided that her new suitor had some serious explaining to do; but before that, the then 32-year-old talk show put her investigative skills to work:
"You got me stepping to this man like, 'Did you lie to me? Did you have me out here looking crazy?!' That's a real conversation to have. I was like, we need to do some investigating. So my publicist, who was me and Jeannie's publicist at the time, called me and was like, 'Aye, there is nothing there.' I looked over I said [to Israel], 'They said there's nothing there!' And it was that they were under their initials and when they found them, they had been filed so long back and he just chose to disclose that the marriage was over way later once children and everybody was like settled, months and months later. But hello! Investigation come through! I needed to know."
While proving that her Magnum P.I. skills are on 10 at all times, Adrienne shared that she also learned a powerful lesson about honesty in romance. While love is about walking in truth, it's also about being real enough with your partner to ask them exactly what the truth is; then and only then did Adrienne finally find the truth that she was searching so desperately for:
"So, this is the thing. If you are being real, you want to talk to you the man, and you're like 'You got me out here looking crazy. Let me see the paperwork. The crazy thing is him and his ex-wife actually filed under their initials and not under their names, so when Page Six and a lot of these other news outlets went to go look for divorce documents, they couldn't find them because they were under their initials for their privacy. Ha-ha! But, it was true."
To watch the full clip, click below!
Adrienne Investigated Online When First Dating Israel To See If He Was Still Married (He Wasn't!)youtu.be
Featured image by @AdrienneBailon.
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Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak