As Wayne Brady revealed on his new Hulu reality series, Wayne Brady: The Family Remix, becoming a dad again at age 51 was not "on [his] bingo card." Admittedly, Wayne, 52, "was floored" when he found out that his ex-girlfriend Tina was pregnant with their child. When he told his ex-wife and current best friend Mandie Taketa, 48, about the unexpected pregnancy, she was worried about him, she told People in an exclusive interview.
The news of Tina's pregnancy came shortly after Wayne lost his grandmother, Valerie Petersen, whom he called "Mom."
Wayne and Tina dated each other "on and off" then broke up, but briefly spent some time together after the death of Wayne's grandmother.
"Tina and Wayne had been broken up a year," Mandie explained. "Then [his] grandma Val passes away so we go to her funeral in the Virgin Islands then we come back. Something happened — you fill in the blank."
Weeks later, they found out that Tina was pregnant and Wayne was the father.
Because of the timing of it all, Mandie worried that Tina's pregnancy news could be hard for Wayne to cope with.
"I was more concerned for Wayne's mental health because that was not a good time. It was a struggle to begin with," she told People.
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"And so it was that on top of everything. I mean, we had just come back from mom's funeral together and then this news was dropped, and so that's my first concern was just weighing his health," she continued during the interview.
At first, Wayne wasn't excited to learn that he would be welcoming a child again (Wayne and Mandie also share a daughter: Maile, who is 21 years old).
"A 51-year-old dad? I didn’t see it coming. So was I happy? No. Because I was in shock," he confessed on his reality show. Up until the show's premiere, he had largely kept the birth of his son a secret. Only his family knew.
"My family is everything to me but there are some things I’ve never told anybody outside of this immediate family," he admitted. "Like, I happen to have a 6-month-old son that people don’t know about."
Although becoming a dad again was not something he anticipated, after the initial shock wore off, he realized he needed to embrace fatherhood again, even though it could come with new challenges.
"I never want Val to grow up thinking that he should be ashamed or look back and go, 'Oh, my dad didn't want me,' or he was ashamed of me," Wayne told People. "Because I want him, in his own way, to know that I love him as much as I love Maile, who is of me and that I had a part in creating."
Being a father to a baby means he has to navigate co-parenting. It might not seem like a huge challenge for Wayne because he already has a nontraditional family (his ex-wife is now his best friend and he spends a lot of time with her and her current partner, Jason Michael Fordham).
However, co-parenting with his ex-girlfriend Tina is still "uncharted territory" for him, as he and Mandie were still together when their daughter was born.
At the same time, Mandie is confident that Wayne's son "is going to be loved," she told People.
She and her current partner Jason also have a young son, and Wayne is a "duncle" (dad/uncle) to him. "I mean I'm just like, 'The more, the merrier. This family is going to grow. I'm telling you,'" she told People in spite of her initial concerns about Wayne welcoming a baby with his ex-girlfriend.
