New beau. Kenya Moore revealed that NeNe Leakes and APHIS VS National Veterinary Stockpile Director Rodney White have been together for a while now.
After stories surfaced this week that Leakes, 52, is allegedly in a relationship with White, while still married to Gregg Leakes, Moore, 49, told Us Weekly exclusively that she wasn’t surprised by the news.
“So many of us [housewives] knew that she was out with this man constantly being affectionate, and we knew what she was doing on the side,” Moore told Us on Tuesday, May 26, about her Real Housewives of Atlanta costar.
The Michigan native noted that she doesn’t take marriage advice from NeNe — which the OG housewife dished out in the season 12 reunion for RHOA earlier this month — because of her current relationship status.
“For me it’s like if you’re so comfortable being out in public with someone and kissing them and being just inappropriate — you’re a married woman — so for me, there was nothing that she could tell me about a marriage, because your own behavior with your own husband is not something that I would want to emulate at any point in time during my marriage,” Moore explained.
NeNe’s rep told Us in a statement on Wednesday that Moore’s comments regarding her costar’s personal life have no merit. “It’s quite disturbing that especially during this time of so much pain that once again we have to deal with a disgruntled housewife trying to capitalize on NeNe’s name and personal life for the sake of publicity,” the statement read.
“Kenya stated herself that she and Nene have not been on speaking terms for almost two years now, so it makes no sense for her to speak with such familiarity about Nene’s personal life. And to drag her decades-long marriage, family and relationship through the mud on a consistent basis to insinuate anything about my client’s character is sad, confusing, and a despicable PR tactic that we have no interest in contributing to. We encourage Kenya to focus on her own marriage and we wish her well.”
Although NeNe’s alleged relationship with White hasn’t been discussed on RHOA, a source told Us exclusively that the two are in fact seeing each other.
“It’s an open secret [that] Nene and Rodney spend time together,” the insider told Us in May. “NeNe goes to visit him in Maryland.”
Moore explained why she thinks the storyline hasn’t made it onto the Bravo reality show.
“I think the people that know are her friends or her confidantes or her partners in crime and I don’t think that they just wanted to be the one to out them,” the mother of one told Us. “But so many of them, including Housewives from other franchises, are aware of this man, of Rodney White.”
She added: “I’m just not sure if they just didn’t want to be the one to break the news on TV about it, but we certainly have had a lot of conversations about her and this man. They’ve been seeing each other for a very long time.”
NeNe, for her part, hasn’t publicly addressed her relationship with the veterinary stockpile director, but the source notes their connection is “absolutely romantic.”
Gregg and NeNe wed in 1997 and divorced in 2011. The two then remarried in June 2013. Their marriage has been shown throughout NeNe’s time on RHOA, including their ups and downs following Gregg’s cancer diagnosis in June 2018 and his recovery.
The couple share son Brentt, 21, and both have other children from previous relationships.
