Nelly celebrated Ashanti’s 45th birthday with a sweet and emotional Instagram post.
Ashanti turned 45 on Oct. 13, and the next day, Nelly took to Instagram to honor her with a heartfelt message. He shared a throwback photo of the two cozying up on a beach in Anguilla back in 2005—the same picture Ashanti had posted earlier this year. Interestingly, the photo dates back to a time when they were publicly denying their relationship.
“Happy Birthday to the most beautiful and amazing woman in this world,” Nelly wrote in his caption. “Marrying you wasn’t just finding love — it was finding home. Love you mama.”
This touching post wouldn’t have happened if Nelly and Ashanti had held on to the resentment they once felt for each other before rekindling their romance.
Earlier this year, in the trailer for their reality series Nelly and Ashanti: We Belong Together, the couple opened up about the tension that followed their 2013 breakup.
“I hated her,” Nelly admitted, with Ashanti echoing the sentiment.
“I hated him,” she said. “I didn’t think that we would get back together.”
Nelly went on to reveal that Ashanti was the one who made their reunion possible, joking, “She got me y’all!”
In a June interview with People, Nelly reflected on their first time dating, describing it as a “test drive.” He explained that their breakup wasn’t “one-sided” and that both of them needed to “grow” before finding their way back to each other stronger than ever.
“It’s about the good outweighing the bad,” Nelly said. “What you thought mattered a lot, once you go through other scenarios, you realize that’s not really as big of a deal as you thought it would be.”
He continued, “Or you get something that you thought you was missing, and it still doesn’t compensate or fill a void, and you’re like, ‘Damn, I thought that would mean more,’ but that doesn’t. It’s just growth.”
“Everybody don’t get a chance to, if you could say, take a test drive,” he added. “It’s like when people say, ‘You should always test drive a car before you buy it.’ I hate to minimize that because this is real life, so you don’t want it to feel like that.”
