You may remember this couple from the surprise engagement that went down at the BMWK 7 year anniversary celebration a couple of weekends ago! We wanted to find out the real story behind this soon-to-be married couple, so we recently sat down with them. This interview and the insight they shared are powerful. So grab a seat and maybe a tissue, and be prepared to be inspired. They share a powerful message about the importance of unpacking your baggage and letting go so you can find hope in love again.
BWMK: Can you share a little bit of background on what the planning process was like for the surprise engagement?
Taye: I just reached out to Lamar [Tyler] and said, ‘Hey, I’m getting ready to propose to my girl!’ I just wanted to see if they could help me out. Kindred is one of our favorite groups and the first song that was ever shared to me by Keri was a song by Kindred called Stars. I was like ‘Wow! I really like this song.’ She (Keri) said ‘Every time I hear this song, I think about you, Taye.’
Everything just seemed so perfect because I was originally planning on doing it on New Years’ night, but this came about so I said, “OK, I hear you God. This is it!” I honestly didn’t think when I sent that email to Lamar that they were going to respond. I actually figured that they get about 1,000 emails a day or something!
BMWK: [Laughs] No, they are some of the coolest people. I’m sure you know that by now.
Taye: Yes, yes, yes! They’re invited to the wedding!
BMWK: So, tell me a little bit about your background, how you met and how long you’ve been dating…we want all the juicy details.
Keri: We met at church. We met May 12th of this year, 2014. And there are two Pastors (well, ministers) at our church who we both know. The wife approached me and told me that someone at the church had been observing me for a while. She wanted to know if I was ready to date and I said, “Well I don’t know. Who is it?” So she pointed him out to me and I turned very slowly.
Taye: Yeah, that little creep turn like she didn’t want me to know that she was looking at me. That’s what it was!
Keri: Yes, I turned very slowly.
Taye: I saw the whole thing. I was like “Wow. I’m being pointed out!”
Keri: Yes, yes you were! So I turned around and I turned back around and two seconds later he walks up and introduces himself. He had a tambourine in his hand and he was shaking.
Taye: Not literally! I didn’t have a real tambourine in my hand, but I was shaking. [Laughs]
Keri: His hands were shaking. He was stuttering a little bit. I said, “Are you OK?” He’s like “Yes, I’m fine. My name is Octavais and I apologize for asking everyone in the church about you but you.” I said “That’s OK.”
He asked if he could take me out for lunch so I said OK. He asked for my number and I kind of gave him a hard time. I told the minister to give it to him.
Taye: I was like ‘what is that? Is that a diss?’ [Laughs]
Keri: That was that! He called me, or he texted me about an hour later; maybe 30 minutes.
Taye: I was scared!
Keri: And I didn’t respond back. Later that night I responded back.
Taye: I know the game. She was playing hard to get!
Keri: Oh, whatever!
![IMG_4025[4]](https://blackandmarriedwithkids.com/app/uploads/2014/12/IMG_40254.jpg)
Taye: She had nothing but time go by, but she couldn’t seem anxious. Being in corporate America, you’re taught to follow up so I wanted to follow up with her. I didn’t want her to think I was a Pro at getting numbers, stats, you know.
Just to fill in the pieces on my perspective of it, I’d been watching her for a while. We have a lot of people that go to our church and everybody was trying to fix me up with their cousin, their sister or their mom. Everybody was like, “Hey Taye, I got somebody for you!” And I’d say, ‘I’m good’ or ‘I’m chillin’’. But she always stood out. She would come, get her praise on and everything by herself and leave. Besides being attractive, she just seemed like she really loved the Lord.
I’m going to be real with you: I was married for six years. I don’t have any game!
Keri: No! [Laughs]
Taye: I don’t. Even back in the day, I mean, I didn’t really have to come up with anything. I didn’t have to work, you know. So when I saw her talking to the Minister Head, and when she turned around and looked at me, I was like, “God, I’m being pointed out!” I acted like I didn’t see her. I was using my peripheral vision, but I had to make a decision in my head: OK, either be that dude that’s known to walk around and whisper behind her back or go be a man and just go and talk to her. So in my mind, I was like Don Juan walking over there!
Keri: No, you weren’t!
Taye: I had a mission’s trip I was going to go on the following week, so I wanted to make sure that I had a chance to at least have that icebreaker meeting; Dinner or lunch to talk through the week coming up because you know how it is: you get somebody’s number then you don’t call them for like a week. You know it’s crazy in the dating world now, so I just wanted to let her know that I was interested in her and genuine, so I said, “Hey, can I see you this week?” She said ‘yeah’ so we met that Tuesday and went to lunch.
Keri: We did. Church on Wednesday.
Taye: Yes. We actually went to Bible Study. I came and sat by her that Wednesday. That lunch started everything, that was our launching pad. That was it.
BMWK: That’s fantastic! So you met in May. How did you know you were ready to take that next step?
Taye: I told her the first day we met right then – when I started gathering myself by leaving Elmer Fudd and coming back to Taye. She said, “Hey, I don’t want any foolishness. Let me know! I’m not about any foolishness.” I’m an Omega and she’s seen me. Then, I used to play in college football, so I’m used to the stereotype. I even took off my Frat pen walking over there to her because I wanted her to see me and not the stereotype. I told her, ‘Hey, I’m not going to even date you if I don’t consider you marriage material. I’m not lonely. I’m not out here looking for somebody to go to the movies with or somebody to just lay up with.’ I’m a pretty settled male. I’m in my career. I’ve got two beautiful daughters and I let her know I’m a packaged deal. If it didn’t work out we could be friends. That was my mindset.
So upon going out on our first lunch, we talked a lot. I asked her a lot of questions. I probably gave her a thorough interview the first week! You know, 50 Cent had 21 questions; I probably gave her 221 questions!
Keri: Yes, he did!
Taye: But she did it right back.
![IMG_4038[6]](https://blackandmarriedwithkids.com/app/uploads/2014/12/IMG_40386.jpg)
BMWK: How was that for you with the questions, Keri?
Keri: It was fun because of course, I’m meeting this guy. He’s been watching me for a while. I had never seen him – ever, ever, ever, so I was very skeptical. Very skeptical and very, very cautious. I didn’t mind the questions and I gave him the questions right back.
He asked me a question, I asked him a question. So we just kind of went back and forth like that. But that allowed us the opportunity to be transparent from day one. And with that, I felt like ‘OK, he really is what he says even though I was still a little skeptical. It took a couple of months to trust him fully. I finally said that he’s my friend. He’s more than just a boyfriend or someone that I’m courting. He’s my friend and so those questions actually benefitted us because we gave all the ugly first!
Most people put on a front and they just want you to see the good parts of them. We did the opposite. We gave all the ugly, all the bad, everything. We put it upfront: this is my past; this is who I was; this is who I am now. You take it or you leave it.
Taye: Yeah, I figured if she stayed around after that, we could talk! [Laugh]
Keri: So that’s how we did it. We started out just being open and honest from day one. I’m glad we did it that way.
Taye: It changed everything. I think we both had been in relationships previously where transparency was not at the forefront.
Keri: No!
Taye: I told her stories about where I’ve had situations where the person I was dating would lock phones and had multiple email addresses and different things like that. I was cool with that space at first, but I just felt like it was always something missing. We both observed great power couples who seem like best friends. I said I always wanted a relationship where if we had the same phone and we got up and she grabbed my phone by mistake, it wouldn’t mean anything because she’d have all my passwords.
I just see so many people go through those problems and I really just wanted an open, transparent relationship. I really wanted to put it out there from the beginning and she felt the same. That’s how we built it and that’s how we still roll to this day.
Keri: To this day!
BMWK: I love it! So Keri, you mentioned your friend asked you when she pointed him out to you if you were ready to date. Does that mean that you’d just gotten out of a relationship? Or was there something going on that she thought you may not have been ready to date at the time?
Keri: There are two things. One: I was recently divorced last year. And the second thing was that I had just lost my seven-year-old daughter. She passed away on November 10th of last year.
BMWK: Oh, no. I’m so sorry to hear that!
Keri: It’s OK. It’s OK. So that was two big um, what’s the word? [Taye: Obstacles.] Obstacles that I was facing and dealing with. Not so much the divorce, because praise God that’s the best thing I could have ever done, was leave my ex-husband. It wasn’t the divorce. It was really the loss of my daughter. Everyone at church knew that my daughter had passed away and so that’s why she asked me if I was ready to date.
BMWK: OK, I can definitely understand that. So what are you guys looking forward to the most in marriage?
Taye: Wow! That’s a great question. Wow! [Laughs] To be honest with you, I think right now I have what I’m happy about, but I think in marriage, just being in that covenant under God would probably be the biggest thing. That’s the cherry on top.
I think we have the Sunday already. We have a saying that we say all the time – which is going to carry forth what we want to do in our life – we say Team Walton Powerhouse. I think we’re going to be a real strong powerhouse couple. Her purpose and things she wants to do in life, I totally support. I think we can both compliment each other with some things I want to do in life as well. That’s something I look forward to. That’s why I praise Lamar and Ronnie, and what they’re doing. They’re just being a shining light for a lot of couples out here. I mean we have a lot of friends, male and female, who are really kind of giving up on love. When I posted our engagement being on Facebook, a lot of people were like, ‘Taye, you’re making us believe in love again.’
Keri: They were inspired and said we gave them hope because a lot of them have similar backgrounds that we have. To see that Taye and I have taken that leap of faith, number one, because we really just stepped out on faith. We said ‘OK, we’ll give love a second try and we’ll see what happens’. I’m glad we did and that’s where we are today.
Taye: We got a lot of people rooting for us.
Keri: We do.
BMWK: I love it! Myself included. Is there anything else that you guys want to share? Any news? Do you guys have a wedding date
Keri: We do have a date: May 9th.
BMWK: Alright. Anything else you want to share with the BMWK family on love or second chances?
Taye: I guess it’s the big thing I was telling Lamar. You just heard her going through her grievance with the passing of her daughter. And with our past divorces, I think we both came out of situations where we did it wrong. We actually can both say – putting that dirt out there – we both came in feet first and we didn’t do it by the owner’s manual.
You know how like a lot of people buy a brand new television? Most people just open the box, put the batteries in the remote and cut it on and go to town. It’s rare that you go back and read the owner’s manual as to how to respectively use your television. So, when it comes times to troubleshoot, that’s when we actually pull out the manual. Well, sometimes, that’s a little too late and I think we both did that. I think with our situation now, we actually went by the owner’s manual, and I’m referring to the Bible. I didn’t just start dating her. We entered into a courtship. We started premarital classes while we were dating. The minister of the church told us that we were one of the highest rated couples on our individual assessments and I knew it! I knew it from my own 221 questions that I gave her, but it’s just good to get that affirmation.
![IMG_4303[9]](https://blackandmarriedwithkids.com/app/uploads/2014/12/IMG_43039.jpg)
You’ve got some guys who can tell a girl straight up, ‘Hey, I’m not ready to settle down yet, but I’m looking for somebody to kick it with’, and she’ll be like, ‘OK’. And that’s something men have been trying to negotiate for years! Women used to be like ‘you have to commit to me in order to get these benefits’. But now, we’ve been allowed to get these benefits without the commitment and it’s causing a sickness in our culture where a lot of people are not looking to commit. They’re just looking to just have ‘situationships’ rather than relationships. We want to show people that we went back to the owner’s manual and we did it the right way. It works, contrary to popular belief.
Sometimes, you gotta have faith. I think the biggest reason people are going into the situation route is there is no more trust.
Everybody is trying to avoid being hurt. I mean, I’ll admit – I was totally transparent with Keri. After coming out of the marriage I came out of, I was worried. Right now we’re going through the Black and Married with Kids Academy and we just did the Unpack Your Bag. One of the examples she gave, was me! I was like ‘man, somebody got over on me the first time’ so I was suspicious of anybody else getting over on me, but sometimes you gotta pray about it. If God led you to this person, and you truly believe God led you to this person, you can let down your guard. I feel like the reward was great!
Watch the VIDEO of Taye proposing to Keri here.
BMWK: Exactly. That’s powerful! Well, I’ve been married nine years and you guys have inspired me. So keep doing what you’re doing.
BMWK: Help us congratulate and send warm wishes to Taye and Keri as they prepare for their future together, by leaving a comment below.