A man who has lived as openly as Jermaine Jackson choosing to announce an engagement in a Spanish city at the age of 63 while on a reunion tour with his siblings is quite astounding. It wasn’t a well-planned press release or a red carpet moment. According to most accounts, Jermaine informing a Dutch newspaper that he and his girlfriend, Maday Velazquez, were getting married soon was just a normal part of a discussion. Easy. Almost informal.
As if their forty-year age difference were the room’s least intriguing feature. At the time, Maday Velazquez was 23. Jermaine was sixty-three. Nobody missed the math, and the tabloids did what tabloids do. But when you take away the noise, you’ll find a real story of a man who has experienced three marriages, a great deal of public pain, and the peculiar burden of having a well-known last name while perhaps sincerely attempting to find true love once more.
| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Full name | Jermaine LaJaune Jackson |
| Occupation | Singer, songwriter, musician, bass player |
| Born | December 11, 1954 · Gary, Indiana, U.S. |
| Age | 71 |
| Years active | 1964 – present |
| Known for | Jackson 5 · The Jacksons · Solo career |
| Genres | Pop, R&B, Soul, Funk |
| Marriages | Hazel Gordy (1973–1988) · Alejandra Oaziaza (1995–2004) · Halima Rashid (2004–2016) |
| Current partner | Maday Velazquez (2018 – present) |
| Children | 8, including Jaafar Jackson |
| Hall of Fame | Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted 1997 (with Jackson 5) |
Shortly after his 2016 divorce from his third wife, Halima Rashid, was finalized, Jermaine started dating Velazquez. In 2015, Rashid was arrested on allegations of domestic abuse, and by 2016, she had filed for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. This was a very traumatic way for their marriage to fall apart. The court case was a shambles.
According to court documents, Rashid waived spousal support in exchange for interests in a water company they had jointly controlled, and he acknowledged collecting nearly half a million dollars from Jackson, in part from the sale of common property. It was obvious that whatever warmth had been there had long since cooled.
It would have felt like a fresh start to meet someone who was decades younger and unburdened by the accumulation of those particular setbacks. Jermaine seems to have wanted something simple after witnessing his own family deal with sadness on a worldwide scale after Michael’s death in 2009. Something fresh. It’s actually difficult to tell from the outside whether Maday Velazquez embodies that. It’s evident that the relationship has endured for a while.
Velazquez was identified by sources as his current partner by 2018, and the engagement announcement, which was made in front of brothers Jackie, Tito, and Marlon at the Jackson 5’s 50th anniversary festivities, was regarded as a legitimate and settled matter. It’s difficult to ignore Jermaine’s decision to commemorate the start of a new chapter and the half-century anniversary of one.
It should be noted that Jermaine Jackson’s love past is complicated. His first marriage, to Hazel Gordy, the daughter of Berry Gordy, the creator of Motown, lasted fifteen years and resulted in three children. Given that the marriage occurred during the Jackson 5’s divorce from Motown, some have contended that it was strategically driven.
When his brothers departed for Epic in 1975, Jermaine remained with the label. Depending on who you ask, that choice may have been motivated by love, loyalty, or familial ties. Jermaine’s solo career was greatly influenced by the marriage before it terminated in 1988.
After that, he developed a connection with Margaret Maldonado, which resulted in two more kids between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Then, from 1995 to 2004, he was married to Alejandra Oaziaza, who was reportedly his brother Randy’s ex-girlfriend.
Halima Rashid came next. A professional relationship with Whitney Houston in the early 1980s that, according to different reports, briefly turned into something more personal was also threaded throughout all of this. It’s a challenging thread to follow. Therefore, Maday Velazquez into more than just a connection with a man. It was a biographical relationship.
The Jackson 5 era, the Motown years, the Victory Tour, Celebrity Big Brother, the Michael biography, the litigation, the divorces, and the sadness are just a few of the decades of public history that Jermaine Jackson carries with him. Regardless of the level of affection involved, that is a significant weight for a 23-year-old to walk toward.
However, age gap relationships are not new, and audiences’ reflexive uneasiness about them reveals as much about the participants as it does about the viewers. Observing Jermaine discuss Velazquez with the same candor he never showed to the media regarding past relationships, it is noteworthy that he seemed content with his choice. not protective. failing to perform. Just certain, or sufficiently certain.
It’s still not entirely clear if the marriage has truly occurred. In the years after the engagement news, there were no significant confirmed announcements, and by 2024, some stories suggested that he might be single without providing any verified information on the relationship.
Jermaine claimed that the wedding would take place “soon,” but it’s still unclear if it actually transpired. All that remains is the picture of a sixty-year-old man standing somewhere in Spain with his brothers surrounding him, discussing love with a casualness that seemed, in some way, more real than anything the tabloid coverage gave him credit for.
i) https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/jermaine-jackson-girlfriend-dating-history-011230427.html
ii) https://www.binnews.com/alternate/amp/2018-08-21-jermaine-jackson-is-set-to-marry-his-girlfriend-40-years-his-junior/
iii) https://www.ebony.com/jermaine-jackson-to-marry-fiancee-40-years-his-junior/