Strange Things About NeNe Leakes' Marriage

NeNe Leakes is the only original cast member remaining on The Real Housewives of Atlanta, which means she's shared a lot of her personal life with fans since its 2008 premiere. Of course, some of those moments include her iconic spats with her frenemies (and straight-up enemies) within the cast. Longtime viewers saw her go from being a stay-at-home mother to a career woman with gigs on scripted television and Broadway, while also witnessing the many ups and downs in NeNe's marriage with Gregg Leakes.

On the show, it seems like NeNe and Gregg epitomize the "yin and yang" dynamic. Gregg has come across as a sweet angel with perfectly-phrased words of wisdom. Meanwhile, NeNe can be a hothead from time to time, reading anyone to filth if they dare to wrong her. However, when it comes to their marriage, neither of them is innocent — and NeNe has had no issues opening up about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sure, it might seem like a logical assumption to blame NeNe for their relationship woes, but that hasn't always been applicable. 

While some of their drama has played out on RHOA, NeNe's spilled her own tea during interviews and sometimes just can't help giving a live relationship update on social media. Let's dig into just some of the strange things in NeNe and Gregg Leakes' marriage. 

In 2010, audio of Gregg Leakes venting about wife NeNe Leakes leaked. Here's what went down: Gregg thought he was having a private conversation with a so-called pal named Corey King, who happened to be a radio host. King secretly recorded Gregg's comments, released the audio, and fans saw it all play out during Season 3 of RHOA. 

According to People, Gregg claimed that he gave NeNe "$300,000 to help launch her career as a reality star," ranting that "the fame got to her head" and he was "asking for every dime of it back." NeNe heard about the leak while working at a local news station in a Bravo moment that involved breaking down that fourth wall. During the episode, she said, "Sometimes I feel like I have slept with the enemy." With a lover like that, who needs enemies, right?

When the scandal broke, Gregg apologized and issued a statement to AllHipHop.com. Saying that the "recording was obtained by fraud and deception" without Gregg's consent, his team stated, "Throughout the duration of the call with Mr. King, Mr. Leakes was under the impression that he was simply confiding in a friend after an argument with his wife. However, Mr. King has demonstrated through this blatant disregard of Mr. Leakes' privacy that he does not even comprehend the word 'friend.'" 

Now that's a read. However, Gregg didn't successfully use his wordsmith abilities on NeNe, since they split shortly after.

Before NeNe Leakes met Gregg Leakes, he already had five kids — but they didn't immediately share a happily blended family. When the on-and-off couple were headed toward divorce in 2011, Gregg's son, Damian Leakes, told R Online, "We are the forgotten side of the family. There's so much talent with the kids he left behind ... We knew [NeNe] didn't like us ... We didn't know what her actual ordeal was." Damian also took issue with his dad and stepmom's reality TV fame and the fact that he and his siblings weren't a part of RHOA, adding, "A TV show could be building process for Gregg and his kids because no one ever knew he had kids." 

Well, Damian got his wish. The family drama was front and center on the 2013 spin-off show, I Dream of NeNe, and one episode featured Damian and NeNe going head-to-head in a very heated televised argument. Both were unhappy with the other's communication, and Damian asked NeNe to "show a little respect to the bloodline" after saying she was "marrying into" the Leakes family (which she had already previously married into). During her confessional, NeNe quipped, "So, if anything, when NeNe took the last name of 'Leakes,' she helped it." 

Yes, she referred to herself in the third person, but she is the most famous Leakes.

In May 2019, Gregg Leakes happily announced that he was cancer-free, taking the time to thank his wife for all of her support on Instagram amid his year-long battle with colon cancer. That should have been a joyous time for the couple and the rest of their friends and family. However, just a few months prior, NeNe Leakes uploaded a video to her YouTube channel, where she shared her theory about why Gregg got cancer. 

Priming her audience, NeNe confessed, "There's a lot of things that go through your head [as a caretaker], and people don't know that." She also warned fans "don't put this against me," insisting she's "just saying this for real" and giving them the "raw raw raw." Finally, NeNe admitted, "People love to say 'karma is a b**ch' and 'karma this' and 'karma that' ... You look at the person and say, 'You did so many different things to me. Is this the payback?' You hope not." 

There's no doubt that battling cancer is an ordeal for everyone involved, not just the patient, but the loved ones who act as caretakers, as well. Even so, NeNe's remarks — which she tied into Gregg's alleged cheating — didn't sit well with one fan, who tweeted, "She has become out of control. For her to claim that Gregg's cancer is his 'karma' because he cheated on her is disgraceful." In response, another person asked, "Did she really say it was karma?!" Well, she implied the thought, at least.

In May 2020, Page Six published an extensive report documenting the ongoing rumors that NeNe Leakes has a secret boyfriend named Rodney White. A source claimed the two were "all over each other" in Miami while Gregg Leakes battled colon cancer in the ATL back in January 2019. Over the next year, White would post since-deleted Instagram snapshots of himself attending NeNe's televised appearances, such as Good Morning America in February and Watch What Happens Live in November. By March 2020, an insider told Page Six that the Glee alum "flaunts her relationship with [White] around openly like they're together."

NeNe's RHOA nemesis, Kenya Moore, later claimed that this secret boyfriend speculation was "absolutely the truth" when she spoke to Hollywood Life in May 2020. "[Page Six] had overwhelming evidence of [NeNe & Rodney] hanging out and being all over each other in public," Moore remarked, while categorizing NeNe and Gregg's marriage as "just a handshake and an agreement." Yikes. At the time, NeNe's rep slammed the reports and Moore's commentary. 

Meanwhile, NeNe herself (sort of) addressed the hearsay in a June 2020 Instagram post, captioning a snapshot of herself and Gregg with, "The bond is unbreakable! Everything else might break tho but not the bond!" Adding that "we both got side pieces," NeNe concluded, "Let us cheat in peace and mind your business please." This may or may not have been a joke.

NeNe Leakes has never been one to keep her thoughts to herself. In June 2019, she tweeted in part, "U find out ur husband/boyfriend been talkin on the phone regularly to 1 of ur female employees as 'just a friend' but u had no knowledge of it, did he cross any lines? Askin 4 a friend since y'all know EVERYTHING." 

There was nothing-at-all-subtle about that social media post. However, NeNe didn't dish on the details until she appeared on Angela Yee's Lip Service the following March. Explaining that husband Gregg Leakes helped her find employees for her clothing store in Maryland, NeNe described a hired manager named Juanita as "very much Gregg's type." However, Juanita later had a falling out with another employee, who revealed during a staff meeting that she had been FaceTiming Gregg. Long story short: NeNe called Gregg on speaker phone, he emphatically denied the claim, they hung up, Juanita's phone beeped with a supposed message from Gregg, and NeNe sent Juanita packing. Phew! Meanwhile, Gregg claimed he struck up a friendship with Juanita because NeNe was "never available to talk," with NeNe recalling him saying, "We never did anything. We just talked on the phone. We never talked about sex."

Why was this not filmed for The Real Housewives of Atlanta? This would have been such a captivating storyline.