Dr Mrs Kemi Oyedepo has opened up on her marriage to Pastor David Oyedepo, recalling how she met him and how she has been faring in the relationship.
She shared her marriage experience during a recent interview on the That’s My Time Podcast, hosted by Tolu Afilaka on YouTube and monitored by Church Times.
In the interview, which lasted for about one hour, she disclosed that she did not know anything about Winners Chapel until after she met her husband.
A daughter of a diplomat, Kemi Oyedepo, who was born in Zimbabwe, said she lived most of her life outside Nigeria because of the nature of her father’s work.
She described herself as a woman who loves to add value to other people’s lives. “I love to help people develop their potential.” She said
As a young girl, she recalled that she was an introvert until she became born again about 26 years ago. “A lot of things started changing when I got born again. I had a mindset shift. Once I had that shift, everything started aligning.”
Talking about how she met her husband of about 18 years, she said, “I was a student at the University of Oklahoma. It was in the process of being there that my husband came to Oral Robert University. It was around that time that a friend came and said she wanted to go and see David Oyedepo, the son of Bishop Oyedepo. And I asked, who is Bishop Oyedepo. I had never heard the name before. I did not even know the church.”
Eventually, she went to visit David along with her friend. “That was how the whole thing started. We went to visit, and I met him, Isaac Oyedepo and his sister.”
It was after that first meeting that she became close to the family.
She recalled, however, that she felt in her spirit that David Oyedepo was going to be her husband from the first time they met. But she waved off the thought because at that time, she was in a relationship with another person.
After their first meeting, they rarely saw each other for two years, during which she broke up with the first person she was dating. But during that time, she was always in touch with David Oyedepo’s siblings.
Ironically, according to her, she first got friendly with Isaac Oyedepo. “Initially, I was quite close to Pastor Isaac Oyedepo that my dad thought I was going to marry him. The day I told my dad, I was in a relationship with Pastor David Oyedepo, my father said, David? Is it not Isaac? I said no it is David, the first one.”
Looking back at when she started dating her husband, Kemi Oyedepo, who married at age 24, she said, “When my husband came to ask my hand in marriage, he was clear and had a direction on where he was going. We had a conversation from the word go that we would not allow strife in our marriage. I remember the first time he came, he said to me that I am a man of peace and I don’t believe in a relationship where there is argument. That does not mean we don’t have disagreements and our differences. But rather than yell at one another, we talk through our differences.” She said, adding, “This is possible if the two parties in the relationship have the same mindset.”
On what to look out for in a new relationship that may lead to marriage, she said, apart from being born again, the person to marry should be mature and have the fruit of the Spirit. “You must understand the family you are joining yourself with, accept the calling of the person and get to understand the person.”