Source: Rodin Eckenroth / Getty
Emmy-winning actress Sheryl Lee Ralph is reportedly excited to start living with Pennsylvania Senator Vincent Hughes, her husband of almost 20 years.
The veteran starlet has reportedly decided to start cohabitating with Hughes in Philadelphia — where the senator is based — according to the Jasmine Brand. The transition will move the Jamaican-American Abbott Elementary actress away from Los Angeles when she’s not filming the popular ABC sitcom.
“Sheryl’s work on Abbott Elementary keeps her anchored in LA while Vincent’s responsibilities tie him to Philadelphia, but regular visits every two weeks is no longer enough,” said an unidentified insider.
“[The actress] will still travel to LA to work, but the moment the camera stops rolling, she’s heading home to her husband!”
The actress and the senator spent time quarantining together in 2020 — but living separately has been their “thing” since they tied the knot in 2005.
Ironically, the news comes less than a month after Ralph told Extra that the key to keeping things fresh in her nearly two-decades-long marriage was living separately.
“We don’t live together,” the actress said of her and Hughes’ arrangement. “I see him every two weeks. When I see him, I’m so happy to see him. When I leave, I’m so happy to leave because I know I’ll be back again.”
“You have to have an incredible amount of trust in that other person. We spend a lot of time talking to each other. But if [Vincent] doesn’t see me every two weeks, he gets a little nervous,” the 66-year-old noted on the cover of AARP‘s August/September 2023 issue. “I married the man who has become my best friend.”
Ralph candidly shared that naysayers thought her and Hughes’ marriage would “never last” because “they’re nothing alike.”
“Almost 20 years later, guess what? Those people are not together,” the Dreamgirls OG cheekily reflected. “Us? We’ve got no problems. If you can get through the first 20 years, you will probably be OK.”
Ralph’s 29th annual DIVAS Simply Singing! event went down Dec. 3 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in LA to raise health awareness and funding surrounding HIV/AIDS prevention and other life-threatening conditions.
Unexpected, a short documentary Ralph produced about HIV premiered on Hulu on Dec. 1 — also World AIDS Day. The entertainment multihyphenate told People that the project focused on how the HIV/AIDS epidemic has impacted Black women.
“So many people around the world have moved away from the conversation around HIV and AIDS,” Ralph asserted. “In 40 years, I have seen this narrative around this disease go from that they wanted to call a ‘gay white man’s disease’ to a ‘Black woman’s disease,’ especially the Black woman in the South of the United States. It has become the burden of this group of women to continue to do the work of raising awareness, and that’s exactly what this film does.”
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