Usher celebrated the biggest weekend of his career with a personal milestone! According to documents obtained by ET, the headliner for this year’s Apple Music Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show and his longtime girlfriend, Jennifer Goicoechea, filed for a marriage license with Las Vegas’s Clark County clerk on Feb. 8.
According to DailyMail, which first reported the news, the 45-year-old singer made the decision to wed after taking advice from his spiritual advisor Amba Kahly Su.
Usher and Goicoechea have been linked since they were first photographed together in 2016. They first sparked rumors of a romance when they were photographed together at producer Keith Thomas’s birthday celebration in Atlanta in June 2019. The couple confirmed their relationship when Usher was photographed kissing the Miami-born music executive backstage at the October 2019 Hollywood Bowl.
The eight-time GRAMMY winner and the senior vice president of A&R at Epic Records have since welcomed two children together, Sovereign Bo, 3, and son Sire Castrello, 2.
The marriage will be Usher’s second: the R&B crooner was previously married to his ex-wife, Tameka Foster, with whom he shares sons Usher Raymond “Cino” V, 16 and Naviyd Ely, 15.
WireImage for Vanity Fair
Speaking with ET as he geared up to take the stage on Sunday, Usher shared that his recently released ninth studio album, Coming Home, featured a few collaborations with his family, especially his teenage sons.
“By the way, they both advise me all the time,” he says. “What’s beautiful is that they care enough to give an opinion and that they feel comfortable sharing it. That’s the other thing because parents at some point become uncool and don’t understand or don’t listen or won’t pay attention. So, I give them the space to.”
He adds, “It took a minute, right? ‘Cause I’m like, ‘Man, you just sit in the room. You want to play video games and you want to make TikToks all day,'” he quips. “But eventually, they were beginning to come up with ideas.”
Usher’s sons also know exactly what they want to hear and how their dad should get the party started when he hits the stage during the big game on Sunday.
“Cinco’s like, ‘You know I’m trying to turn up, man,’ and Naviyd’s like, ‘No, we gotta make sure that everybody can do the dances, you gotta play this number, you should start with this,'” he says of his boys’ input. “I’m like, ‘Why don’t you play the Super Bowl then?’ You know what I’m saying?” he says with a laugh.
He adds, “They have an opinion and it’s real. Like this is what I feel and this is what I look at, this is what we are. So yeah, in some way, it’s authentic but it’s not trying to just fit in, like, ‘No, this is what I like and this what I would like to see you do.'”
While the boys have opinions, Usher admits that it’s his baby girl who runs the house. Fans got a look at how he spends time with little Sovereign in the teaser video for “Ruin.”
“Whatever she wants, she’s basically the princess of the house,” he says of his baby girl. “You become a shield of yourself when your daughter’s next to you. It’s just all that tough guy stuff goes right out the window, you’re on your knees running around, tea parties and Candyland and all that.”
RELATED CONTENT: