Eminem Met His Ex-Wife Kim Scott When She Was 13
Hit-making rapper Eminem boasts countless awards and accolades to his name, but it was a long road to the top for the Detroit-bred emcee. As a teenager, he dealt with bullying from his peers before finding rap as a way to express himself. At the same time, he began an on and off relationship with Kim Scott, his future wife.
Eminem met Kim Scott when she was 13
The young Marshall Mathers was at a house party in 1988 when he first met Kimberly Scott. They quickly hit it off after she watched him standing on a table rapping to an LL Cool J song. That same day, Scott had just been released from a youth home; she dealt with a tumultuous life with her family, which included an abusive father who dealt with alcoholism.
“I met her the day she got out of the youth home,” Eminem recalled in a 2004 interview with Rolling Stone. “I was at a friend’s house, and his sister was friends with her, but she hadn’t seen Kim in a while ’cause she was in the youth home. And I’m standing on the table with my shirt off, on top of their coffee table with a Kangol on, mocking the words to LL Cool J’s ‘I’m Bad.’ And I turn around and she’s at the door. Her friend hands her a cigarette.”
“She’s 13, she’s taller than me, and she didn’t look that young. She easily coulda been mistaken for 16, 17,” he continued. “I said to my friend’s sister, ‘Yo, who was that? She’s kinda hot.’ And the saga began. Now there’s the constant struggle of ‘will I ever meet somebody else that’s gonna be real with me, as real as I can say she’s been with me?’”
Kim Scott moved in with Eminem
They bonded over their shared struggles, as Eminem’s mother had addiction problems of her own. Scott was 13 when they met, while Eminem was 15 and living with his mother, Debbie Nelson, at the time. Scott asked Em if she could move in with him, which Nelson agreed to.
“Marshall arrived home from school with a tall, sulky blonde girl,” Nelson wrote in her 2008 memoir My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem. “He introduced her as Kim Scott and said she needed a place to stay. I was happy to help out.”
Scott and Mathers started an on-and-off relationship that lasted several years after Scott moved in. They eventually started a family of their own in the ’90s and got married in 1999.
Their relationship was filled with ups and downs
Though Scott and Eminem came into each other’s lives in a beautiful way, their relationship didn’t come without its speed bumps.
“He would constantly try to belittle me and make me think, like, I should be grateful, basically, that he was with me,” Scott said in a 2007 interview on 20/20.
“Money is great, but it doesn’t make your husband stay at home with you,” she continued of their troubles. “Or sleep in the same bed with you … Him being on the road and on tour … that was like the big one. I mean … constant infidelities, all the time.”
The two decided to divorce in 2001, two years after first tying the knot. They still maintained a relationship as they raised their children together. Eventually, the two reconciled and got married once again in 2006, but Scott admitted that it probably wasn’t a good idea at the time.
“I was excited, I was happy, but at the same time, I thought he was rushing things,” she said of Em’s second proposal, explaining that highs and lows had become characteristic of their union. “In our relationship, there’s a pattern. Like, we’ll have two good years and then it will go bad for some reason. It’s like a two-year max with us and we hadn’t reached the two years yet. I just didn’t want to rush into anything before the two years.” The two divorced just three months after getting married again.
