Better together! Wayne Brady and his ex-wife Mandie Taketa have amicably coparented their 16-year-old daughter, Maile, since their 2008 split.
“[The secret is] time and knowing when to let things go for the greater good,” the comedian, 47, recently told Us Weekly exclusively while promoting his partnership with Tracfone and their unlimted data carryover. “She is the most amazing woman in the world and one of the most amazing moms, I think, that has ever walked the planet. Our daughter’s proof of that and the fact that she slaps me into shape. She’s the reason I think that I’ve had the success I have.”
He and the Hawaii native are “better friends than” spouses, Brady explained to Us. “Everyone says, ‘Girl, you should marry your best friend. It’s so good to always find that person. He’s your best friend and you guys can do anything,’” the Let’s Make a Deal host said. “No, you’re best friends for a reason. Then [when you get married], everything has this super pressure on it that it didn’t when you’re best friends. Now … as weird as it sounds, I can honestly say she’s closer to me than people who are my blood relatives.”
In fact, the Georgia native thinks Taketa is “more like a sister than a person [he] had a baby with at some point.”
The former couple welcomed Maile in 2003, and the Whose Line Is It Anyway? star told Us that raising a teenager requires “a lot of catering and servitude.”
He explained, “There’s servitude when you’re a parent to a small child, but then it becomes different when you’ve got a teenager because the way she acts helps me navigate life. She’ll say, ‘Dad, I want to spend time with you.’ ‘Oh, you do?’ ‘Dad, I’m busy.’ ‘OK.’ She keeps me on my toes.”
As a working dad, Brady found that helping people save money on Let’s Make a Deal led perfectly into his Tracfone partnership. “Their whole thing is, ‘Hey, let’s save you money. Let’s save these families money. Let’s take back the control of your phone and your plan, unlimited data carryover,'” he told Us. “In fact, there’s so much money that we waste because of the streaming that you don’t use [and] data that doesn’t roll over that you get trapped into [feeling like], ‘Oh, I’ve got to pay this because that’s just what it is.’ Tracfone is breaking that paradigm right now by saying, ‘No, that isn’t it. We are letting you control how much you want.’”
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
