BLACK LOVE: Holly Robinson Peete Reveals How She And Rodney Have Lasted 17 YEARS!

 

Wait...there's still hope for the Hollywood marriages!  Holly Robinson Peete opened up to Essence.com for a revealing Q-n-A about marriage and lasting love with her husband, former NFLer Rodney Peete.  Find out how they keep the love alive inside.....

Holly Robinson Peete and her husband Rodney have been married for 17 years (and that's two lifetimes in Hollywood) and she opened up to Essence.com about their marriage and what's kept it going for so long.

ESSENCE.COM: How long have you and Rodney been married? It feels like forever. What’s that like?
HOLLY ROBINSON-PEETE: Yes, we’ve been married for almost seventeen years. It’s very happy. We’ve had our ups, our downs; we’ve had lots of things happen in our life we didn’t expect. We had these great twins and this great love story and then autism came and kicked us in the gut. Rodney retired from football, which was another transition. Some players retired to the golf course, but he retired right to the carpool lane – and proud of it.

 

ESSENCE.COM: How do you two do it? Make it work, that is.
HOLLY: One of the biggest things is that we’re really fortunate because Rodney and I are really good partners. When one is up and the other one is not, we support each other.

I think that as a couple, our priorities are different than some of the other celebrities in town. Are our kids happy? Do we have a house to live in? How’s our charity going? Those are the things we look at to gage success. We have a very different gauge of success, I believe. There was a little dry spell for me when I wasn’t on TV, but I was like, you know what, I’m raising this money for autism and we are embracing this mission and speaking on behalf of thousands and thousands of families that don’t have a voice. That feels successful to me. Some people get excited when they meet a big star. For me, meeting the philanthropic stars, like Marian Wright Edelman, are the ones that get me excited.

ESSENCE.COM: What do you admire most about Rodney?
HOLLY: His pride in being a father. It’s a very sexy trait. When the twins were born and he would sleep with them and cuddle with them it was so special. Just watching him with his kids and discovering a new love. It really used to get me so teary-eyed. Now it’s watching him in the backyard with his son or watching him give my daughter some advice that she doesn’t want. Just him investing himself as a dad and taking pride in that makes me admire him as a man.

Now, I don’t want to make the picture look too rosy because we fight, we have our stuff. We have ups and downs and we have issues on all levels just like all families do, and all couples do. The reality is that I find the more you focus on what is really positive about your relationship the better. I remind myself to compliment him.

Every now and then I send him a random text like, “You look cute today” or “I love you." When you’ve been married this long it can be hard, but you work at it. When you get mad there are so many little things you can say, but every now and then I send that sweet little text to show that I appreciate him and I’m thinking about him. The beauty is in the little details. It’s the little things in that you do in relationships. For my kids, I’ll leave these corny little notes – sometimes drawings – in their lunchboxes. I’ll write I love you, or draw a picture or something. They love it.

 

Read the rest of the informative Q-n-A over at Essence.com

 

Source: http://theybf.com/2011/08/23/black-love-holly-robinson-peete-reveals-how-she-and-rodney-have-lasted-17-years

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