Aaliyah Responded Evasively When Asked If She’d Ever Been in Love
Though Aaliyah was a major star in the 1990s, she kept details about her family, hobbies, and love life as private as possible. Despite this, information about her personal life leaked out, including news of her illegal marriage to R. Kelly when she was 15. When asked directly about this, and other details about her love life, though, Aaliyah did her best to dodge the questions. Here’s what she said when asked if she’d ever been in love.
Aaliyah dodged a question about her love life
In a 2001 interview, Aaliyah pointedly avoided speaking about her brief and illegal marriage to R. Kelly. At the time, she was 15 and he was 27. The interviewer said she only mentioned it vaguely and in passing.
“Of course, everybody’s had hard times,” she told Vibe Magazine in 2001. “I’ve had hard times. I don’t really think I will go into detail as to what it was. But when you go through something so painful, it just helps you become a stronger person.”
When asked directly about her love life, Aaliyah politely declined to answer.
“Private life!” she warned while smiling. “I don’t want to share that.”
She gave a glimpse into her personal life when she insisted she had only dated two people in her life. She said both relationships were brief, despite what news outlets might have reported.
“I think rumors are hilarious,” she said. “I don’t pay any attention. It goes in one ear and out the other. When you’re in the business, you hang out with people, and people are like, ‘I wonder, are they seeing each other?’ I never dated Jay. I never dated Ginuwine. Damon [Dash] and I are very good friends. I’ll keep it at that right now.”
Some details about Aaliyah’s love life only emerged after her death
While Aaliyah didn’t elaborate on her relationship with Damon Dash, she was reportedly involved with him at the time of her death. In interviews after her death, Dash said the couple had plans to marry, even though they were not formally engaged.
Dash told Entertainment Tonight that they grew close after reading the book The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav. He said it sparked a “serious connection and a union” between them and that they were “inseparable” after reading it.
“She was the best person I ever knew … I never met a person like her in my life,” Damon told MTV News in the days after Aaliyah’s death. “Every day that we were together, we cherished. Every memory — every day was a special event, whether it was going to a store or going to a movie, or just sitting in a house. Wherever we were was like our own little party, in our own little world.”
She wanted to keep more than just her romantic relationships away from the public eye
Aaliyah wanted to build a barrier between her private life and the way she presented herself to the public. She said she had been this way even before fame.
“I’ve always been mysterious. My mother and father always used to ask me, ‘What are you thinking, what’s going on?’ There are times when I don’t understand myself, you know what I mean?” she asked, adding, “I have black-out shades in my apartment, I push a button, it’s totally dark. I think I’m a bit of a vampire in real life, and there are times when I just want to be myself. I wanna be alone.”
She didn’t think that being a celebrity meant she owed details about her personal life to anyone else.
“People feel like they own you in this business, and, to a certain degree, they do,” she explained. “But there’s a part of me that will always be just for me.”
