Ashanti Shares How She Told Nelly She Was Pregnant and How He Already Knew

Ashanti sat down with Entertainment Tonight, where she gushed over boyfriend-turned-fiancée Nelly’s reaction to the news she was pregnant and how he somehow already knew.

“I was kind of late… My fiancé kind of blurted something out on stage and when he blurted that out on stage we actually did not know,” Ashanti told the publication. “I hadn’t even taken a test at that time.”

The announcement ended up being a huge “coincidence” when she took a pregnancy test and discovered she was in fact expecting.

“I was so shocked and happy and emotional,” she says of confirming her pregnancy. “I always dreamed about it. I wanted it so, so bad and I just feel like the timing was perfect.”

“He was just like, ‘Oh I knew,'” Ashanti said of Nelly.

Ashanti then revealed how she told Nelly the confirmation. Too excited to wait for him to get home from the studio, she had to FaceTime him.

“We were both smiling. I was actually at his mom’s house and I had to FaceTime him; I couldn’t wait for him to come home,” she revealed to the publication adding there was a “little bit of everything” from tears of shock and joy.

The pair kept the secret to themselves for months, admitting that it “wasn’t tough to hold onto a secret like this.” However, the growing bump had a mind of its own.

“There are so many things that we just keep close to the chest both of us are very private people,” she said of her and Nelly.

Turns out that may be a very, very true statement, with TMZ reporting the couple have actually been married since December of last year, despite saying they’re still just engaged.

As for the pregnancy, once the secret was out, there was a sigh of relief. “Oh my gosh, it’s like a breath of fresh air I just felt like I was, well, literally carrying,” the “Body On Me” singer said.

Ashanti said she’s been lucky so far in her pregnancy journey with no symptoms, no morning sickness, and no cravings.

She also revealed she and Nelly did find out the sex of their baby but are keeping that to themselves for the time being.

“What’s crazy is I didn’t feel like one way or the other [about the sex of the baby], but I know when I was in high school I always said, ‘Oh, I’m going to have… first, and it happened,” she said of her manifesting her first born.

In April, Ashanti and Nelly announced they are expecting their first baby together, with the R&B singer confirming the news in a video shared to her Instagram.

In the video, she was getting ready for a performance when her mom, Tina Douglas, asked her how much time she needed. “Uh, I’m gonna need about nine months,” Ashanti answered, prompting her mom to look shocked.

The pair, who called it quits for good back in 2013, crossed paths again nearly 10 years later, in 2021, at Fat Joe and Ja Rule’s Verzuz battle, where Nelly got Ashanti’s number from DJ City.

“I had to really, like, be real with myself, like, do I have feelings for him again? Like what’s going on?” Ashanti recalled questioning once the pair began rekindling their romance. “Because they were out, you know what I mean. They were gone. I was pleasantly surprised that they were there.”

Three years later, Ashanti and Nelly are closer than ever as they get ready to walk down the aisle — they’ve not had a public wedding — and start a family of their own. While this will be the pair’s first child together, Nelly shares two kids with ex Channetta Valentine, and adopted his sister’s two kids after her death in 2005.