After marrying with Jennifer Goicoechea last week in Las Vegas, Usher opened that he once proposed to former-girlfriend Chilli Thomas of TLC but she turned him down.
Usher is revealing about one of his first true loves in a new People magazine cover story. The vocalist, 45, talked to the magazine about his intense romance with TLC’s Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, whom the “Yeah!” singer encounter when he moved to Atlanta from his house in Chattanooga, TN as a teenager.
Explaining himself as someone who “was always charming the older ladies,” Usher said he was smitten when he met Chilli, now 53, who was seven years older than him when they started dating in 2001. “If I am to be honest, I was her No. 1 fan, and she was my superstar,” he stated, adding that he had Chilli’s poster on the wall of his childhood bedroom when he was 8-years-old.
Said, ‘Man that girl is so pretty. One day I’m going to meet her,’” he remembered saying at the time. And though meeting the woman of his dreams and starting a connection with her was magical, Usher said the affair ultimately fizzled because of various priorities.
“I was a young man, and she had very specific rules that didn’t work for me,” he said to People of the vocalist who appeared in the videos for Usher’s hits “U Remind Me,” “U Got it Bad” and “U Don’t Have to Call.”
We were missing each other. I really did want to have a different type of connection where she was there with me, and she couldn’t be,” said Usher, who promised the crowd at Allegiant Stadium in Vegas during Sunday’s Super Bowl LVIII halftime show.
“She didn’t believe that I was actually in love with her as much as I was. In spite of the difficulties, Usher said his plan to marry Chilli went sideways. “I proposed and she told me no. I went via a great deal of pain after that, not trusting women or wanting to open up,” Usher said. “I hurt her too,” he added, noting that the split also “broke my heart.”