Steve Harvey has been coming to his wife’s defence recently because of rumours about her being the side chick in Steve’s previous marriage and her alleged infidelity.
Toward the end of August, speculation on social media started swirling, alleging that Marjorie recently cheated on Steve with a staff member. When he took the stage at an event on August 27th, he began by saying:
"Before I get started, just let me say I'm fine. We're fine. I don't know what y'all doing but find something else to do because we're fine. Lord have mercy. Man, I ain't got no time for rumors and gossip. God's been good to me, I'm still shining."
Even Marjorie, who remains fairly tight-lipped about her private life, felt the need to respond to the rumours, putting a post up on Instagram with a lengthy caption:
This week, though, it seems that more irritating than the rumours about Marjorie in their current marriage are the rumours about the role Marjorie played in Steve’s previous one, prompting him to go on a lengthy tirade on Steve Harvey FM.
“Y’all quit talking about ‘she was in my other marriage and ruined it,’” he began. “She didn’t. She was nowhere around that. I got divorced in 2005.”
Steve spelled out the timeline of his previous marriage, saying that it was over long before the papers were served and signed and that his nuptials “weren’t worth a quarter” before he even met Marjorie – and that when he did, he was broke, perhaps to address the idea she was a gold-digger.
“In 2005, I had nothing. I lost the radio show we were on in L.A. on March 23, and I lost the only TV show I had. Steve Harvey had no money,” he explained.
He described meeting Marjorie on New Year’s Eve, saying they later got together in 2006.
“We had nothing,” he said. “She didn’t marry into no lap of riches. I had nothing.”
He went on to describe proposing to Marjorie near the end of 2006. She told him she wanted to get married within a year but he said he was hesitant because he couldn’t afford a wedding on that timeline. And when he expressed this to her, she told him not to worry and that they would build wealth together, so he did, in fact, marry her within the year.
“We got married in 2007,” he said. “We had 4 stations in 2005. We built this. All of this. We built this. That woman got down in there in that foxhole with me and built this. In 2007 we got married, 2008 we found out that somebody had stolen 7 years of my tax returns and we owed the government $22 million. She stayed with me in that.”
Steve recalled getting Family Feud in 2009, the same year he also got a book deal. In 2012, he said he got his talk show.
“I’m telling you this woman got in the hole and built this with me. She didn’t steal nothing. And I’m tired of y’all talking about my girl, because my girl is one of the best women I’ve ever met,” he said fiercely.
I mean – wow? I almost wish there were rumours swirling about me just so someone would come to my defence the way he came to hers. If sticking with someone that owes anyone, especially the government, $22 million is not an indication of love, I don’t know what is.
As a celebrity, the ability to exercise discernment over which rumours to address and respond to is crucial. I did a quick search for the publications responsible for spreading this misinformation and yielded next to nothing – which brings up the question of whether he’s making a mountain out of a molehill.
But in the video, Steve takes direct aim at Black blogs specifically, saying they’re out to destroy people and that it’s not working.
“We’re a tighter two hand circle now. So thank you for doing that. You’re not gonna split us up, we’re not going anywhere, and she is none of what you say she is and she’s the best chick I know,” he concluded.
A lot of the couple’s supporters flooded the comment sections of Marjorie’s August post saying she didn’t even have to address the ‘nonsense’. And in the comments on The Shaderoom, certainly a place that’s no stranger to some harsh rhetoric, people appeared to be in support of the couple, asking why Marjorie’s name is being dragged through the mud, with one commenter reminding us that all Marjorie does is “mind her business and give us high fashion.”
While we may not know exactly where the rumours are coming from, it’s clear that it’s bothering this couple. The last time we saw a Black man defend his wife this fiercely was at the Oscars, when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock to make a point and to remind him to keep Jada’s name out of his mouth (and that’s putting it nicely, we all remember the soundbite).
Steve’s reaction is motivated by the same thing Will’s was – seeing his wife’s disappointment and hurt. And for that reason alone, Steve decided that this molehill does in fact, need to be treated as a mountain. And by going on record to clear up any misconceptions, putting these blogs on notice and making it clear that they are a unit and a team, I think he accomplished the same thing Will did that night but with way more tact, grace, and impact.
Among the Black community, Black men are often taken to task – and rightfully so – for not defending Black women. We saw this with the Tory Lanez trial, where many Black men expressed awful sentiments about Megan Thee Stallion. We saw this with the Breonna Taylor case, where most of the people out there protesting her murder were Black women. But in this instance, Steve is reminding us that in some cases, Black men ride for Black women just as hard as Black women ride for them. And we love to see it.
