I knew that Aaliyah really looked up to Rob and had a crush on Rob, so I thought he just fell victim to that...
R. Kelly’s marital history with Aaliyah...
By 1991, R. Kelly had been introduced to ingenue Aaliyah Dana Haughton by her uncle Barry Hankerson, Gladys Knight’s ex- husband, CEO of Blackground Entertainment, and Kelly’s then manager.
“I sang for him,” Aaliyah told VIBE in 1994, “and he liked my sound.” Shortly thereafter, Aaliyah, then 12, and Kelly, 23, began work on her debut album, the presciently titled Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number (Blackground/Jive).
The album, whose back cover read, “Written and produced by R. Kelly especially for Aaliyah,” was released in May 1994, shortly after Aaliyah turned 15, and became a fast success, thanks to the first single, “Back & Forth,” which scaled Billboard’s Hot 100.
The album was eventually certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Throughout their musical partnership, rumors of a romantic relationship between the two persisted, and critics chattered about the adult content that Kelly wrote for his teenage muse. Kelly’s former lover Kim L. Dulaney told VIBE she knew of his relationship with the underage singer before the news broke, but thought it was an “accidental” affair.
“The Aaliyah thing I thought was an accident, a fluke, because I knew that [Kelly] respected Barry, so I felt for him to violate that respect and that trust that Barry had [in him] was an accident,” she says. “I knew that Aaliyah really looked up to Rob and had a crush on Rob, so I thought he just fell victim to that association and them giving him so much freedom with Aaliyah.”
Aaliyah and Kelly were secretly married at the Sheraton Gateway Suites in Rosemont,
Ill., on August 31, 1994 (her age was listed as 18 on the marriage certificate). Once it came to light, the illegal marriage was quietly annulled.
Her family separated the couple, and Aaliyah allegedly never saw Kelly again. Despite all this, Hankerson and Blackground continued to manage Kelly until 2000. Kelly and Aaliyah went on to record platinum projects separately.
In 2001, just as her career appeared to be reaching superstar heights, Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash after leaving the set of a video shoot in the Bahamas.
Kelly has never spoken publicly about his marriage to Aaliyah.
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