Everything Ne-Yo and Crystal Renay Said About Their Relationship Before Cheating Allegations

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Everything Ne-Yo and Crystal Renay Said About Their Relationship Before Cheating Allegations

The way they were. Ne-Yo and Crystal Renay have experienced plenty of ups and downs throughout their relationship, but they've never been shy about publicly expressing their love for each other. The "Closer" crooner and the NudeLuxeRx Skincare founder met in 2015 when Renay auditioned for one of her future husband's music videos. Less than one year later, the duo were engaged and expecting their first child together, son Shaffer, born in March 2016. (The pair later welcomed son Roman in June 2018 and daughter Isabella in June 2021, and Ne-Yo is also the father of two kids from a previous relationship.) The Masked Singer U.K. alum and the beauty mogul tied the knot in February 2016 at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. “At the end of the ceremony, Ne-Yo and Crystal held hands and raised their arms into the air as all the guests screamed and cheered," an insider told Us Weekly at the time. "They looked so happy and in love.” [jwplayer kKQBVlFD-zhNYySv2] Speaking about their romance four years later, Ne-Yo revealed that he and Renay fell in love very quickly. “The first thing I said to her was that ‘I am aware that you are a beautiful woman, that you are smart, that you are driven and I’m aware that I can handle all of this [fame] stuff,’” the Grammy winner told Essence in October 2020. “She laid out her dirty laundry, I laid out my dirty laundry [and] after this very uncomfortable conversation, the air in the room got lighter so to speak, and we didn’t feel like we had to work as hard to impress each other." Four years after the wedding, the "Miss Independent" singer announced that he and his wife had called it quits, but they ultimately reconciled in June 2020 and renewed their vows two years later. In July 2022, however, their romance hit another snag when Renay accused Ne-Yo (real name: Shaffer Chimere Smith) of repeatedly cheating on her throughout their marriage. “8 years of life and deception," she wrote via Instagram at the time. “To say I’m heartbroken and disgusted is [an] understatement. To ask me to stay and accept it is absolutely insane. The mentality of a narcissist.” In the wake of Renay's allegations, the former World of Dance judge told fans that he planned to deal with the situation privately. “For the sake of our children, my family and I will work through our challenges behind closed doors,” he tweeted in July 2022. “Personal matters are not meant to be addressed and dissected in public forums. I simply ask that you please respect me and my family’s privacy at this time.” Keep scrolling for more of Ne-Yo and Renay's quotes about each other over the years. [podcast_block]

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October 2015

During an interview with The Jasmine Brand, Renay said that the hardest part about the duo's relationship was dealing with "misconceptions" and "negativity" from outside observers. "Inside of our relationship, we are amazing," she said. "We’re happy! We communicate very well [and have] from the very beginning."

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April 2018

The Red Tails actor told In Touch that his favorite job is being a father and husband. "There are two places in the world I can 100 percent be myself and not worry about judgment,” he explained. “And that is with my wife and kids, which makes them the most important people on the face of the planet to me.”

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June 2018

Ne-Yo revealed that his seventh studio album, Good Man, was inspired by his first in-depth conversation with Renay as well as the ways he'd tried to change to become a better partner. "I found myself in a lot of relationships where I was trying to be what I thought was perfect to her. Even despite — mind you every butterfly you know was first a caterpillar — when I was cheating and other stuff I was doing," he added to Vibe. "I wanted her to feel like in her eyes I was perfect for her. She never caught wind of anything, she never saw anything, my dirt never touched her so to speak. But it was fake. It wasn’t real."

With Renay, he "made the decision" to behave differently. "A lot of the stupid things we do as men are because we are selfish and don’t give a s–t about anybody," he explained. "It took me a while to realize that and step outside of myself and say: 'You are a selfish bastard, bruh. Like, for real. You need to get that under control or else you’re going to die alone.'"

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February 2020

When Ne-Yo announced the couple's split, he couldn't help but gush about his wife. “It’s not a sad thing, it’s more of us realizing that — long story short, I’m never gonna talk bad about her. I’m not that person," he said during an appearance on the "Private Talk With Alexis Texas" podcast. "There’s nothing bad to say about her. She’s a fantastic woman. She’s the mother of my children and she’s always gonna be that and I will always respect her.”

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June 2020

After the pair called off their split, the "So Sick" musician said that quarantining at home during the coronavirus pandemic helped them repair their relationship. “The whole quarantine thing was kind of a blessing,” he said during an interview on The Talk. "Before the quarantine happened, we were definitely talking divorce. The quarantine kind of forced us to sit still, block out the noise from the world. You know the world can get very, very loud, and we tend to let the world’s opinion mean more in certain situations than it should. ... We’re actually stronger now than we were before, because now we feel like we can really talk to each other.”

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October 2021

"The pandemic saved my marriage," Ne-Yo reiterated during an appearance on Good Morning Britain. "We were talking full-on divorce. It forced us to sit down and talk about our problems and reconnect with our kids. There's only so much FaceTime you can do."

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January 2022

After Renay appeared in a music video for her husband's song "Stay Down," Ne-Yo revealed that his wife inspired the lyrics. "The song is, in essence, in part about her,” he told Essence. “The song is about the multiple people in my life that I know are going to stay down with me. That becomes very, very important at a certain point in your career and at a certain age. If I never sold another record. If I never made another dollar, who would still be here?”

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May 2022

One month after renewing his vows with Renay, Ne-Yo said that "really uncomfortable conversations" helped them get their romance back on track. "As a human being, it's just real difficult, especially with somebody that you love and you care for. You care about how they feel," he told E!'s Daily Pop. "So, to tell them something about themselves that they may not enjoy, it's hard to do that, on top of it being hard to hear about yourself."

The R&B singer also touched on the couple's marital problems in his single "Don't Love Me," which debuted that month. "It's very easy to be considerate and passionate and all these things via a song because that is literally three minutes of a lifetime," he said in the same interview. "It's a whole other thing to be a husband to somebody and to deal with the ups and downs and black, white and gray of what love is in that aspect."

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July 2022

Days before Renay went public with her allegations, Ne-Yo said he wouldn't want to know if his partner was cheating on him. “Listen, if I wake up every morning [and] the breakfast is cooked, my kids [are] taken care of, every time we around each other we smiling and happy and things are blissful, and on my deathbed somebody tell me you was cheating on me my whole life — I lived a pretty good damn life,” he said during an interview with Power 105.1's The Breakfast Club. “I personally am a person that is not angry at living in a blissful bubble of ignorance. The truth is rarely pretty. In this world, in this life, you have to choose your happy. So, I choose to believe the truth that makes me happy as opposed to searching for the ugly truth that’s going to mess up my happy."