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After The Real co-host Jeannie Mai announced she and her husband Jeezy are expecting their first child together, Mai’s ex-husband Freddy Harteis has spoken out — messily.
MADAMENOIRE previously reported, Mai has been very candid in the past about never wanting to have kids. Her decision and Harteis’ desire to be a father were a conflict in their 14-year long marriage and became a significant factor in why they separated in 2017. Their divorce was finalized in 2018.
In her recent interview with Women’s Health that broke the news of her pregnancy, Mai reiterated, “My entire life, I never wanted children. When I say never, I’m talking a hard-stop never.”
According to Mai, falling in love with Jeezy is what changed her perspective on being a mother. After trying to conceive for over a year, undergoing IVF and suffering a miscarriage, The Real co-host expressed being excited and “relieved to finally share the news” of her pregnancy earlier this week.
On social media, after one user joked about how Harteis was “probably biting bricks and screaming” after hearing that Mai is five months into her pregnancy with Jeezy’s baby, the co-host’s ex-husband clapped back in the comments.
“Yep. I upgraded from trash to treasure a long time ago,” Harteis wrote back. “Best decision I ever made. Congratulations. Being truly happy is an amazing feeling. Love my little family.”
Notably, Harteis is now engaged to Linsey Toole, and the couple has two young children, daughter, Emersyn Rose, and son, Huck Fredrick.
According to screenshots of messages between the couple shared by @theneighborhoodtalk, there were apparently rumors that the two had been having an affair before Harteis and Mai called it quits. To clear her name, Toole had seemingly wanted to do an interview to dispel the speculation at that time.
After Helecia Choyce asked Toole to appear on her podcast Girlfriends and Champagne, Harteis advised Toole not to do the interview with someone of “brown culture” because “they are so protective and can be vindictive.”
“The best host u can agree to is someone who is neutral — they can still be brown, but they need to have a certain reputation within the community,” Harteis wrote to Toole, before noting that the potential host should also be “reputable.”
Toole later said in a series of messages, different from her thread with Harteis, that she was considering going on Jada Pinkett-Smith’s Red Table Talk — but “the only issue” was that Pinkett-Smith is “a strong Black woman who stands for Black women.” Toole also said she wasn’t sure Pinkett-Smith would “help” her or “favor” her side of the story.
Read Harteis and Toole’s messiness in full down below.
