Nicki Minaj found love where her fans least expected it. The rapper raised eyebrows when she went public with Kenneth “Zoo” Petty, who is a registered sex offender, in December 2018.
Since then, the couple, who married in October 2019, have been unfazed by the backlash surrounding their whirlwind romance. Minaj has defended Petty from critics on Instagram, where she continues to flaunt the pair’s journey to love with PDA-filled photos and videos.
The Queens native — who previously dated rappers Safaree Samuels, Meek Mill and Nas — has long expressed her desire to settle down and start a family.
“If I’m done with my fifth album and I don’t have a child by then, no matter how much money I have, I would be disappointed, as a woman, because I feel like I was put here to be a mother,” she told Complex in December 2014. “I have definitely put off the wife thing because I don’t want people in my business. I’d rather not do anything that’s going to be on paper but I definitely will be married before I have my baby. I want to make sure I do it in that order. I’ve always felt like that since I was young; my mother always put that in my head. By the fifth album, I will have walked down the aisle and I will at least be on baby No. 1, possibly baby No. 2. And have $500 million.”
That said, Minaj has made it clear that she has never relied on a man. “As soon as I realized that I could actually live and breathe, and eat and sleep, and walk and talk without having a boyfriend, something clicked in me. The fact that I am a young woman who doesn’t need a man for money. I don’t need a man for the job,” she told Elle in July 2018. “I’ve never had to f–k for beats. I’ve never had to f–k for a record deal. I don’t have those pressures. I get up when I want, shop when I want.”
Scroll down to see a timeline of Minaj and Petty’s relationship so far.