The BB Bridal Files: Inside the Love Story of T’Aire & Tyrus

The love story of Tyrus and T’Aire is a love story only God could have written. Affectionately calling their journey “A Tale of Two T’s”, the pair have learned what it means to build a love that will last. From real-life faith talk to fashion deep dives, the two invested much intention into their big day and are candid in sharing their take on love. The newlyweds sat down with Black Bride just the day after their wedding to discuss their journey to and at the altar this summer. 

Kennedi LéShea: I’m so excited to be chatting with you guys today. I consider every conversation and interview an honor. I love talking about love stories. We see the older generations – the Denzel and Pauletta’s and all those people and those examples and they’re so amazing – but you know, especially right now in today’s day and age, in the battle of the sexes, it’s rare to see Black love be young and actually happy and thriving so it’s always really an honor for me to get to talk to couples like you all who embody that and are giving that to our generation as an example and a beacon of hope and light so I’m really excited to be talking with you guys today.

So first and foremost, tell me about yourselves, your background, your origin story.

T’aire: I am born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Basketball was kind of my segway through life. I played starting very young, fortunate enough to play through college. And my career was kind of impacted by injury. So I started to navigate away from the game. As I graduated from the University of Arizona and I was exploring different avenues in sports, I took a shift with the University of Connecticut women’s basketball and it was a great two years there. I learned a lot and I actually met the person that introduced me to him so that part of my story with basketball will always be super, super important to me because it was one of the the details in our love story.

Tyrus: I was born in Portland, Oregon and I’m the youngest of four boys total, so my mom is the queen of the house full of all men. My father is a pastor and has been as long as I’ve been alive – he literally actually started the church the year that I was born and became a bishop. So, just growing up in church has been big foundation for me. It’s just a super important part of my life. Like T’Aire also mentioned, basketball has also been a connector for us. It’s been the thing that has cultivated a lot of the relationships that I have to this day. And a lot of the relationships that I am continuing to cultivate. And it’s definitely a major part of our relationship.

KL: As children, some of us grow up thinking about marriage. And it’s in our adolescence where we are nurtured into what we will become by our parents, by the people around us, by loved ones by what we watch, what we consume; so, how did you both prepare in becoming the man and woman of your dreams before you met each other?

Tyrus: Oh, that’s a great question. My mom always spoke over me that my purpose was great. So, when we start talking about even the things that I do professionally like with my brand, Tyrus Divine, my parents instilled that level of intentionality in me at an early age. They used to always remind me that I was not planned and a lot of people might think of that as mean or say, “Man, are they calling him an accident?” or whatever but they wanted me to know that God ordained me to be here for a reason which is why they gave me my middle name “Divine”. I wasn’t in their plan but I was in God’s and so I feel like growing up, I understood that and I had a conviction very early on about purpose. And although I maybe didn’t have all of the pieces to the puzzle yet, but I knew that my purpose was great. 

T’Aire: Growing up, I grew up in a single-parent household as an only child, and I was very observant. I’ve always been kind of shy, and I didn’t really talk a lot, and so I would always observe. I would observe my surroundings. I would observe my family. I would observe other friends and my friends’ families and stuff like that. And so my situation was unique. One of the biggest things about me is that I met my father at 17 in the Atlanta airport. A lot of people have different origin stories with their parents and stuff like that but that was so crazy for me and it is something that i’ll never forget. So, I knew early that although I may not have come from a two-parent household, in the future, I wanted my children to come from a two-parent household.

And I knew that I always wanted to be married. I knew that I always wanted to be surrounded by real and genuine love. Because although my family may not have been perfect on paper, we had real love. So, I knew that to become who I needed to become I might need to do some things differently but I also knew I needed to hold on to those pieces that made me who I am today as well. 

KL: I love that. I think that’s so true. What you just said about growing up, even though you didn’t grow up in what some would say is the ideal environment or “family structure” – whatever that even is – it reminds me ofmy cousin. She just wrote a book called Before You Were Everything about growing up in our family. And she talks about growing up with so much love even though it wasn’t the “picture perfect” idea and so I’m glad you have that story as well and are able to share that in this interview because I think sometimes, when we even talk about Black love and examples of Black love, it’s only told at times from the perspective of the “picture perfect”, two-parent household. And that’s not the only mirror that we can see love in. It sometimes does look non-traditional or, um, in ways and spaces and formations that aren’t typical or common and that doesn’t make them any more discounted. So thank you for sharing that.

You know the saying “it takes a village to raise a child”, I like to also say that I think it takes a village to prepare a man and woman for marriage. So, how did you all prepare for marriage and who helped you define marriage?

Tyrus: I was blessed to have had an example right in front of me. I grew up in a house where my dad would be like, “Take a ride with me real quick, I want to surprise your mom with some flowers today” and it would just be like little stuff like that were like little nuggets. So I don’t think it was a literal definition to me that I learned, but I do know that through my parents’ example, I knew what it was supposed to look like.

T’Aire: For me, I would say I had examples in my immediate family. I was always curious. I would ask questions like, “Why does aunty make my uncle his plate?” Because I didn’t understand that. It’s just me and my mom at the house and we get our own plates!

But I do think that strengthening our relationship with Christ was a really big part of the preparation we did together. His dad gave us an analogy as him and my mother in law did our premarital counseling and he basically said, “You guys are the two-handed circle this is your marriage what goes in your marriage is nobody else’s business and everybody else’s opinion doesn’t really infiltrate this two-handed circle” so, I think that us kind of just paving our own way has helped. We’re learning from each other. We’re growing individually. We’re getting our fitness right. We’re eating right, all of those things. So I feel like we had a well-rounded approach to preparing from eating, getting in our Bibles, shedding old versions of ourselves. All of it. 

Tyrus: That was also the main reason why we already got married. We got to a point where we had really started to deepen our relationship and we realized what was right for us and decided there was some things we could no longer do. We wanted to do it the right way and so on December 23rd of 2024, we said to each other, “We’re gonna get it in front of God and then we’ll have the celebration later”. We fasted up until that day and we also got baptized that morning in a very private ceremony with literally just our parents and a photographer and that was it. A lot of people didn’t know that we were already married so they found that out yesterday at the wedding. So I think that was also definitely part of the preparation.

KL: What’s the best piece of advice you got in marriage counseling?

T’Aire: I would go back to what I said before with the two-handed circle. It was really big for me. And it was something that we touched on in multiple of the sessions. There are so many outside opinions and outside feelings that can try to infiltrate that circle. That was something that has stuck with me ever since it was first told to us. And then of course, keeping Christ at the center and the foundation, even when things get shaky, if your foundation’s strong, you’ll be all right.

Tyrus: They actually had us label our top five priorities and I thought that was really good. I think it helped show us where our lines intersected and where we really aligned on things, where we really want to go deeper. And now as we entered into marriage, it helped us navigate in continuing to build the foundation of our relationship. 

KL: Speaking of counseling and faith, those are often two things that show up as a reflection of who we truly are. So has marriage brought a sense of self-reflection to you? And if so, what has it taught you about yourself?

T’Aire: We went through a rough patch at one point and I had gone home and I remember sending him a message speaking about being vulnerable. I didn’t realize how much my relationship with my dad impacted me as an adult. As a child, I think my mom really sheltered me. She wouldn’t even talk about it. It was just me and her. And I was fortunate enough to have a grandfather who was like my father. And he passed away when I was like 13. And so that hit me hard. And so I think my relationships with men after were rough. It was hard for me. I didn’t get even close to something like this prior to, you know what I mean?

And so I had reached a point where I realized that in order for us to go to that next level, I need to be able to be as vulnerable, as open, as honest as I can if this is my person. I realized he has to see every version of me and I was kind of scared, to be honest. But I realized I’m safe with him; I can open up and know that he’s not going to judge me. He’s not going to hold it over my head. He’s not going to do any of that because he loves me.

Tyrus: I know women tend you know tend to use this word a lot when it comes to a relationships but for me, it was a reflection that like I could be safe too because at an early age, I realized my impact on people. For a long time, I never really trusted that I could give myself to someone that would take care of the kind of person that I was. And so while I’m very open, very vulnerable, very authentic, I had a wall up; to fully open myself up was tough. But one of the things that was so intriguing about T’Aire from the beginning was how different she felt for me. When I’m with her, there’s times where I’ve just found myself around her, and I’m just spilling and every time I walk away, I’ll be like, “Dang, I overshared”, and she’s just always reminding me, like, “Nah, that’s why I’m here”. She’s my safe space. When I’m out in the world and I’m getting beat up, I know I can come home and know that this is my safe space to refuel and to replenish so that I can go back into the world and be the man that God called me to be and give and pour into everybody else.

KL: This level of vulnerability you both are giving right now is so relevant to the world in this moment, especially with the state of even this country right now. As we speak, Black Americans – both men and women – are not all feeling safe in our own backyard, so being able to find somebody that you do feel safety with and protecting that feeling and keeping that sacred is so important so I’m glad that you guys both touched on that. That gives us hope. 

Now that we have the deeper questions out of the way, let’s get to the fun stuff. In a world where Black people’s lifestyles are often monitored to be diminished, eyes watch us to make sure we don’t soar too far, you guys went the polar opposite. You two had custom pieces designed for your wedding day. You had a lot of fashion fun and that played such a major part in your big day. So I’m curious to hear why and how the medium of fashion became such an integral part of your wedding day. And what does fashion and style mean to you in the landscape of love?

T’Aire: So my aunt, her name is Sylvia Loveless Amos. I come from a very musical backgrounded family. I have a rock star uncle. His name is André Cymone. Him and Prince were in the band together when they were young. And so my great-grandmother, who is my Aunt Sylvia’s mom, she kind of took Prince in and he was kind of like the other brother in our family. She was a seamstress and she made some of their costumes and things for their concerts and things like that. So when the time came for this, I knew I wanted to ask her to design my dress and she immediately said “yes”. I did go and try on some dresses at some bridalshops and I sent her all the inspo and she kind of like freestyled it and came up with it on her own and we did make tweaks here and there but she was really the mastermind behind it as far as the fashion for me. I haven’t been the most fashionable in my life But when you’re married to a stylist and a fashion world person, you kind of got to come along. And so I think that Tyrus has also helped me in my fashion journey. I think I’m able to be more expressive now and allow my fashion to reflect who I am. 

Tyrus: I started loving fashion as a kid and my parents instilled the importance of how you present yourself to the world is very important. And so then as I’ve evolved and now that I have the brand and things like that, I would say why fashion for our wedding was such an important piece for me in all of this because my brand, Tyrus Divine, is where elegance meets impartation. I was becoming the product of my process. Designing the pieces I did for the big day, was probably the hardest secrets I’ve ever had to keep because she didn’t know about it! It was a surprise. So behind the scenes, I was like in heaven this whole time. It was the two things that I love the most and my two purposes merging. I was lit!

I’m learning that I am a storyteller at heart. And so to have this opportunity to share my story and our love story through design and styling, allowed me to not just craft pieces, but almost artifacts in a way of our story – of things that will live and tell a story beyond just a garment.

KL: What was your wedding vision? Tell me about your wedding aesthetic.

T’Aire: I would say it was a simplistic elegance. Our decor was very intentionally minimal. It kind of allowed the atmosphere of being in a tropical place on a resort in Mexico to be the decor. 

It took a lot on all fronts for our guests, ourselves, our parents, our loved ones to make it. It took a lot for us to just get here. So we knew we wanted to make this trip worth it for everybody. A lot of us stayed a couple extra days or came a couple days early. We wanted to take time with one another, enjoy it, and make memories with everyone. And I think we were able to do that. It truly was one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever had. I had the best day. I just kept telling myself to take a mental snapshot of it all. 

Tyrus: I also wanted our people to leave inspired. I grew up very diverse. Like, got homies in the hood yet I also grew up in a predominantly white area. I went to school in multiple, different places so I have a very diverse background. I’ve seen all types of situations. And I tell T’aire all the time that we have something rare and something that can touch everybody we come in contact with. I wanted people to leave feeling like we poured back into them after they’ve poured into us just by simply being here.

One of my groomsmen told me, “Before this, I was saying, ‘Man, forget love.’ But now, I’m going back home and I’m trying to find my one.” And so knowing that we have that, and I tell her this all the time, when you know that God is giving you a gift, it has to become a conviction to walk it out. And so I feel like this is like our gift to the world. Our story is our gift to share. 

KL: Describe that now iconic moment in your love story of walking down the aisle to meet one another. 

T’Aire: I walked out to “Beautiful” by India.Arie and it was beautiful. I decided to walk with my mom and I think that that was super, super special because it’s always been us. I looked up to see him crying and I was like, “I’m going to lose it”. But I held it together pretty well considering I’m clearly the emotional one in this relationship. I’ll never forget that moment. 

KL: What do you want your legacy to be as husband and wife? I think we often think about legacy on an individual spectrum and on an individual level but what about the ones we’re building with our person? Tell me your vision for that.

Tyrus: If I was to break it down to one word, I would say I want our legacy to be “selfless”. I tell her this all the time, looking at both of our family dynamics, we all have that one person in our family who you know that if something was going on, they were going to make sure everything turned out okay and everybody was okay. They were going to be the ones to bring everybody together. And I told her early on, we’re going to be that. And I think that that speaks to just who we are. So I want our legacy to be selfless. I want us to show up for people and have a heart for people.

T’Aire: I would say first that we kept Christ at the center of our lives. That we left a positive impact on others and that we were just good people. 

– We wish T’Aire and Tyrus a lifetime of health, wealth and marital bliss!

Credits:

Photography by LaCrissha Walton and McKayla Chandler.

Styling by Tyrus Divine.

Bridal Gown: Sylvia Loveless Amos.

Bridal Hair: Bertille Tella.

Bridal MUA: Essence Douglas.

Groom’s Grooming: Luis Solar.

The post The BB Bridal Files: Inside the Love Story of T’Aire & Tyrus appeared first on Black Bride.