Photo courtesy of Baron Coleman on Facebook
Ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick married fiancee Laticia Maria McGee over the weekend at the church where he gave his first sermon.
The couple married at Little Rock Baptist Church in Detroit on Saturday, according to Deadline Detroit. The ceremony was officiated by Bishop J. Drew Sheard.
McGee worked at Kilpatrick’s office in 2002 during his time as mayor of Detroit but they rarely interacted. In 2013, he was sentenced to 28 years in prison for 24 charges related to corruption including racketeering, mail fraud and wire fraud. He was released from prison in January after former President Donald Trump commuted
his sentence to time served, per The Detroit News.Kilpatrick didn’t connect with McGee 2018, when a friend told him there was a woman who wanted to give him some encouraging words.
“I was mad about being in prison. I wasn’t looking for a relationship,” he told Deadline Detroit. After he found McGee’s number while tidying his cell, he called her.
“We started a conversation and started praying together,” Kilpatrick said. “Neither one of us was looking for a relationship at the time.”
Kilpatrick and his new wife do not plan to stay in Michigan but he did not specify where they would live. He doesn’t plan to return to politics and will focus on being a minister. He told Deadline Detroit he plans to attend seminary school in the South. Kilpatrick and McGee filed articles of incorporation for a nonprofit in Georgia last month.
Kilpatrick gave a sermon at Little Rock Baptist Church on June 13, his first public appearance since his release, reported Fox 2 Detroit. He told the congregation he was called to preach after a prison chaplain encouraged him to become a worship leader.
“I learned it’s alright to be honest with God because he knows anyway, I learned how to pray with no one around, I learned how to worship with no audience, I learned how to preach with not a single person in the room,” he told the audience.
Kilpatrick is on his second marriage. He divorced his first wife, Carlita, in 2018. The former couple share three adult children.