Everything Nicki Minaj Has Said About Her New Husband Kenneth 'Zoo' Petty
After months of calling boyfriend Kenneth “Zoo” Petty her “husband,” Nicki Minaj made it official.
On Monday, the rapper announced that she had tied the knot with Petty by sharing a video of matching “Mr. and Mrs.” mugs and “Bride and Groom” baseball caps on Instagram.
Keeping it simple, Minaj captioned the short clip, “👰🏽🤵🏽😢🙏🏽🎀 Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty 10•21•19” — referencing her new name and seemingly the day that she and Petty officially tied the knot.
This isn’t the first time that Minaj, 36, has let fans in on her relationship with Petty, 41, though. Ever since the two went Instagram official in December 2018, Minaj has openly declared her love.
“He want me to be his wife- his MISSIS like SIPPI NOW,” she captioned a series of photos of the two of them laughing together in December at her birthday party (as well as a video of her grinding up on him).
After fans were quick to point out Petty’s criminal past (he is a registered sex offender in the state of New York and was convicted in April 1995 of attempted rape in the first degree for an incident that occurred in September 1994 involving a 16-year-old girl) later that month, Minaj spoke out about the criticism.
Responding to commenters on Instagram, Minaj said, “He was 15, she was 16 … in a relationship. But go awf Internet. Y’all can’t run my life. Y’all can’t even run y’all own life. Thank you boo.”
Petty also pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the shooting death of a man named Lamont Robinson in 2002, according to a criminal complaint obtained by The Blast.
According to the outlet, Petty pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charge in March 2006 and served seven years in prison after being sentenced to 10. Petty was released in May 2013, and had been on supervised release for five years until May of this year, records accessed by PEOPLE show.
The following month, in January, Minaj replied to a comment on Twitter suggesting that she and Petty couldn’t count the amount of times they had sex every day on one hand.
“Nicki probably getting d— 6x a night and giggles when y’all keep saying 3,” the fan wrote.
In response, Minaj wrote, “3-4 on average. 6 is a bit much sis.”
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In March, Minaj sparked questions about whether or not she had married Petty after calling him her “husband” on her Apple Beats 1 Queen Radio show.
“Every night when I get out of the shower, my husband takes this really good lotion that we just bought, and he massages my feet, and rubs them, and he rubs each toe individually, and the heel, and the ball of my foot, and he does it all,” she said.
The same month, she posted a photo with Petty in France, along with the caption: “Bae out in Paris.”
Then in June, Petty starred with Minaj in her music video for the song “Megatron.”
The video featured Minaj and Petty in a hot tub as she sang, “I f— him like I miss him / He just came out of prison” — a line that fans interpreted as reference to Petty’s criminal record.
Minaj also confirmed that month that she and Petty had already acquired a marriage license.
“We did get our marriage license,” Minaj said on Queen Radio. “I think I have what I was striving for, just happiness. It was so hard to get to a happy place. Now that I’m there, I don’t want to compromise that for anyone or anything.”
In July, Minaj had fans speculating that she might be engaged and expecting a baby with Petty, after hearing her verse on Chance the Rapper’s reggae-tinged song “Zanies and Fools.”
“He the Clyde to my Bonnie, ’bout to walk down the aisle and be a mommy,” raps Minaj on the track. “Ooh, I remember when I cried like, ‘Why me?’ / Now I wouldn’t exchange my life for Armani.”
On her verse, Minaj also reveals that she and Petty met in New York in their teens.
“I met my husband when I was 17 out in Queens / If you love it, let it go, now I know what that means / While he was up North for a body / I bodied everybody and got known for my body,” she raps.
During an episode of Queen Radio that aired later in July, Minaj again clapped back at critics of her relationship with Petty.
“When a person is with a n— that loved them before they had a dime in their pocket? How do you not understand that? How do you not understand happiness vs clout?” Minaj said on the episode, according to E! News.
“How f—ing dare you talk about lowering standards,” she added, before telling haters to “wake up” and realize that love should not be based on materialistic desires and circumstances.
“It’s the truth, money cannot buy me happiness and good sex,” Minaj said.
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On the Aug. 12 episode of Queen Radio, Minaj revealed that she filed for a marriage license again and would be married in “about 80 days.”
“We still had to pick it up and I was traveling, by the time I came back, we had to renew it again,” she explained. “From that time, you have 90 days to get married. That was about a week ago, so now I have about 80 days.”
Even though she made it official, Minaj still had music priorities to attend to.
“I have to work on my album and I have a lot to focus on that I don’t want to do the big wedding now,” she said at the time. “We’ll do the big wedding later.”
The rapper then raved about her beau, saying, “I’m very happy about that because my baby makes me so happy.”
In September, Minaj opened up about her former romances on Twitter, revealing that one of her exes was abusive.
“A man should make you feel safe, not afraid,” she said. “I remember being so afraid to speak ’cause I never knew when that person would be in a particular mood and I could maybe say one wrong thing that would get me hit.”
“A man who loves you does not humiliate you on social media, beat you, cheat on you, call you out of your name/put you down to lower your self-esteem due to his own insecurities,” or “hide his phone, passwords, whereabouts, etc,” she advised.
Minaj made it clear that isn’t how she feels about Petty, though. “The difference you see in me now is that feeling when a woman feels lifted up, safe, appreciated and unconditionally loved,” she said.
“I first had to learn how to love MYSELF,” she continued. “If you wouldn’t let a man treat your mother, your sister or best friend like that because you LOVE them, then you wouldn’t let a man treat YOU like that because you love YOU.”
