The man that officiated Aaliyah Haughton and R. Kelly’s wedding took the stand to share details about the day he married the teen to the older man.
The wedding took place on August 31, 1994, when the young R&B singer was only 15 and her senior beau was 27. However, according to Nathan Edmond, who married the two, he had never met the couple before the make-shift wedding, did not know their ages nor their celebrity status.
After being subpoenaed to speak, the hesitant witness said, “I didn’t think it was anybody special — I didn’t understand it at all … A friend of Mr. Kelly’s, who was also a friend and associate of mine, asked me to do him a favor.”
He also noted that the wedding was “about 10 minutes or less” and had very few guests. Outside of “the couple” and himself, were three other men that he didn’t know.
He described the two as wearing matching sweatsuits, classic 90s style with both of them having one leg pushed up. He also said he never really see what Aaliyah looked like as she appeared to be rocking the style that made us love her back in the day.
He testified, “You couldn’t see her whole face, because her hair was over her face.”
R. Kelly’s team wanted Edmond to sign a confidentiality agreement but because it looked shady, he did not comply.
“I looked at it, I read it, then I kind of chuckled… and said it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on,” he shared. He just promised not to say anything, one oath that he kept. He also noted that Kelly offered him $25 to $50 to officiate the wedding, but he declined.
R. Kelly met Aaliyah when she was 12, two years after she appeared on the hit show Star Search. She was the niece of his manager Barry Hankerson and his then-wife Gladys Knight. He started having a sexual relationship shortly after he met her, while she was in her early teens.
He is currently on trial for one charge of racketeering based on sexual exploitation of children, kidnapping and forced labor, and eight counts of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting anyone across state lines for prostitution.
The man that penned “Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number” for Aaliyah, also went by the name “Pied Piper of R&B.” In classical literature, the Pied Piper led children astray by playing music.