Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union are closing in on a decade of marriage come 2024. The two tied the knot with one another in 2014 but not without quite a few hiccups along the way. They would first meet at an NFL Super Bowl party in 2007 but at the time, Wade was still married to Siovaughn Funches.
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Funches and Wade were high school sweethearts and shared two children together: Zaire and Zaya. They would get married in 2002 but divorce in 2007. The Miami Heat superstar would then go through a tumultuous divorce leading up to quite the publicized and ugly custody battle.
Dwyane would eventually be granted sole custody of the two children he fathered with Funches in 2011. It was around this time between 2009 and 2011 that Wade and Union sparked dating rumors when they appeared with one another at the Summer Grove Benefit Dinner in 2010.
Jolinda Wade on Dwyane Wade calling Gabrielle Union his ‘soulmate’
Jolinda Wade has always been protective of her son, Dwyane Wade. He claimed that she’d even gone into a state of depression after he had retired from the NBA in 2019 because she didn’t know if she liked basketball or just liked the fact that her son was in the league.
While on ‘Raising Fame’ with Sonya and Dell Curry, Jolinda revealed that Dwyane had actually come up to her and introduced Gabrielle Union as ‘his soulmate’. With Wade fresh off a divorce and in the midst of a custody battle, Jolinda wanted him to pump the brake just a little bit.
“I remember when he first told me about her, he said, ‘Ma, I want you to meet my soulmate.’ Yo what? Boy you don’t even know what a soulmate is. Protective mother, who is she? You just need to calm down,” said Jolinda.
Of course, when Dwyane brought Gabrielle to see his mother and his family, she would almost instantly approve of their romance. ‘Just a star’ is how Jolinda described Union, claiming she didn’t even know she was an actress at the time.
