Chance the Rapper announced Wednesday that he is getting married this weekend to his longtime girlfriend Kirsten Corley.
Chance, whose real name is Chancelor Bennett, shared a childhood photo of Corley, explaining when they first met.
“STORYTIME: So this photo was taken on the day that I first met my wife!” Bennett wrote along with the image.
The two first met at Bennett’s mother’s work party when he was 9 years old.
“In the year 2003, my mom used to work as a real estate agent at a black-owned franchise called Re/Max Exclusive Properties,” he wrote. “One night, she took my dad and my brother and I to one of her office parties to get better acquainted with her co-workers.”
Bennett said he was “prolly obvlivious to what was going on.”
“That being said I was probably playing a gameboy in a corner or eating candy, initally unimpressed by my surroundings.”
But that soon changed.
“Out of nowhere, we were all told to make room, to spread out and make a circle for a presentation,” Bennett wrote. “This office full of adults, Taylor and myself formed a semicircle and from the back stepped out 3 young girls. Who were not Destiny’s Child.”
Everyone was shushing each other, he continues, and the beat and bass start picking up.
“My dad nudges my shoulder,” Bennett wrote. “At this age I had already won 2 school-wide talent shows for dancing…But I was always nervous…Young me was shy.”
But Bennett’s dad encouraged him to dance, saying “‘Son go out there. Show em what you got.'”
Bennett was still nervous but not because of stage fright.
“this wasn’t the time or place. Not just because it wasn’t my party, not because it was their moment to dance, not even cause I was nervous about dancing in front of folks,” he wrote. “Its cause I knew I was gonna marry that girl. And I aint wanna jump the gun.”
And that’s how he announced it.
“16 years later it’s happeing This wknd is the time, and the place is my wedding,” he wrote. “I’m gonna dance with my wife because this is my destiny.”
Bennett proposed in July, describing Corley as his “oldest and best friend.”
The couple has a 3-year-old daughter, Kensli Bennett.