After years of marital toxicity and rancid rumors of infidelity and a love child, talk show host Wendy Williams is filing for divorce from her longtime husband and manager Kevin Hunter.
A source close to Williams told People magazine that the media maven will finally split from her husband after more than two decades of marriage.
Moreover, Williams had the legal papers served to her husband while he was at work — which also happens to be “The Wendy Williams” show, for which he is a co-producer, TMZ reported,
Williams, 54, and Hunter, 46, wed on Nov. 30, 1997, and have one son together, Kevin Jr., who is 18.
The news of the divorce comes less than a month after reports that Hunter’s alleged mistress, Sharina Hudson, had given birth in a Philadelphia hospital in March. Learning this may have sent Williams over the edge and spiraling into a destructive period of alcohol and drug abuse, multiple media outlets contend.
Wendy — she is mostly known by her first name — admitted on her eponymous morning talk show that she’d been staying at a sober house for months due to her continued dependence on legal and illicit drugs.
The drug recovery is what some pop culture pundits say was the real reason for her self-imposed moratorium from her show from January to March 2019, and not what she detailed earlier this year as her recovery from Grave’s disease and a fractured shoulder. Those two conditions, however, may have played a small part in her stint away from the show, pundits said.
“My husband was extremely concerned,” Wendy told People two years ago when addressing his attentiveness to her physical and emotional state. “He’s not just my husband, he’s my business partner, one of the executive producers on the show and he’s also my manager. He and I are glued at the hip.”
They may have been inseparable from a business standpoint but that unbreakable bond didn’t seem to carry over into their home lives. As Williams admitted in her book, Wendy’s Got the Heat, Hunter cheated on Williams after she gave birth to their son.
Rumors of chronic infidelity — and physical abuse — have plagued their marriage ever since.
Williams initially tried to put a positive spin on what Hunter’s cheating did to their union.
“It has made our marriage — and I know this is cliché, but it’s true — it’s made our marriage stronger,” she told VladTV in 2013. “No, I’m not back to the girl I was before him, because when you get stung like that, you never go back to who you were — only a fool does. But I love him, and he loves me, and we addressed it head-on.”
This year, with the rumors of Hunter’s relationship with Hudson raging to deafening levels, Williams was forced to address it on live TV.
“I’m still very much in love with my husband,” she told her talk show audience as a way to check her critics.
“Marriages have ebbs and flows, marriage isn’t easy. And don’t ask me about mine until you see this gone,” she added, pointing to her wedding ring. “And it ain’t going anywhere, not in this lifetime.”
Well, now it looks like the wedding ring is going into the trash.
