R&B songstress Mary J. Blige has filed for divorce from Martin “Kendu” Isaacs, her husband of 12 years and her longtime manager.
TMZ.com said Thursday that according to court documents, nine-time Grammy Award-winner Blige, 45 cited irreconcilable differences and asked the court not to grant spousal support. She also lists the date of separation as “to be determined.” The two have no children together, but Isaacs has two children, teens Nas and Jordan, with his first wife and an older daughter, Briana, from a teenaged relationship.
Multiplatinum recording star and actress Blige, who played Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West, in NBC’s “The Wiz Live!” in December, married Isaacs on Dec. 7, 2003, at her home in Bergen County, New Jersey.
Blige often spoke of Isaacs’ importance in her life, telling Parade magazine in 2006, “He’s a great man—very smart and full of love, because his parents gave him love. I treated him so badly for a while, because I’d never experienced real love before. I was suspicious. It seemed too good to be true.” She said, “He was the first person to ever challenge what I did: ‘Why are you drinking? Why do you hate yourself? You don’t need to be around people who tear you down. You’re beautiful, Mary.’ He was the first man to ever tell me that.”
In a November 2014 interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph, she conceded it could be challenging being married to one’s manager. “He always has my back — he’s going to fight to the death for Mary J. Blige. The downside is that there’s no separation — it’s on all the time. When you don’t feel like answering to your manager, he’s still your husband,” adding, “If one of you doesn’t want to talk about something right now, you have to respect that. And you have to respect each other’s space.”
