Tina Knowles is sharing some insight into the early days of her daughter Beyoncé’s relationship with her now-husband, Jay-Z.
According to Knowles, 71, the pair’s romance began as a friendship after they met in the early 2000s. “Beyoncé had developed a friendship with him, solely over the phone,” Knowles wrote in her memoir, Matriarch, which dropped on Tuesday, April 22. “They provided good counsel to each other as they discussed the industry, each sharing a singular confidence in their artistic vision.”
When the rapper, now 55, visited the Knowles family’s hometown of Houston for a concert, Beyoncé’s mom invited him over for dinner. “As Beyoncé and Jay then kept up with each other in calls, the friendship deepened,” Knowles recalled. “She would tell me, ‘He’s just so nice.’”
At the time, however, Beyoncé, now 43, was also talking to “another guy in the industry” who was interested in pursuing a relationship with her. While the Grammy winner was in Los Angeles filming 2002’s Austin Powers in Goldmember, both Jay-Z and the other guy were coming to visit, so she asked her mom for advice about what to do.
“‘Well, who do you like the most?’” Knowles recalled asking her daughter. “‘Who do you enjoy talking to more?’ I watched her think. It was Jay. Isn’t it humbling how love can begin with such a simple feeling? You like talking to someone over the phone. You’re 21 years old and you can’t know someday you will take that love to the stars, but it begins with such a small instinct.”
Beyoncé ultimately chose Jay, and as their relationship “got more serious,” Knowles met Jay’s mother, Gloria Carter, his grandmother Hattie White (the one featured on “Freedom” from Beyoncé’s Lemonade) and his two sisters.
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“That was the start of the Carter and Knowles families joining as one family, and we are all very close to this day,” she wrote. “Our gatherings would become parties, rich with laughter and storytelling, drinking and dancing. In the Bible it says to eat, drink, and be merry, and that’s what our evenings are like with the Carters.”
When Beyoncé and Jay-Z tied the knot in April 2008, Knowles designed her daughter’s wedding dress.
“They had the wedding at their house on April 4 because it was the only place that we knew it wouldn’t get out,” Knowles wrote. “We had a lady make white curtains to cover the walls and windows, right up to the 25-foot ceilings. … The details are my daughter and son-in-law’s, but what I will say is that I joined Jay’s grandmother and mother in cooking all the food. We did soul food, of course, the best food for a night of dancing and family love.”
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While the book doesn’t delve too deeply into personal details about Jay-Z’s relationship with Beyoncé, Knowles is clear that she thinks of both the “99 Problems” artist and Kelly Rowland’s husband, Tim Weatherspoon, as her sons.
“They are true blessings, and I could not ask for better providers and protectors of my daughters and their children, and I am always touched that their sense of protection extends to me,” she wrote. “Jay is an example for his children, starting with very humble beginnings and overcoming every obstacle in the world to be the successful businessman he is. Tim is humble and quiet but incredibly perceptive, managing Kelly’s career for years before becoming an executive at Nickelodeon. Even with all the things they are involved in, their best performance is as fathers.”
Beyoncé and Jay-Z share three children: daughter Blue Ivy, 13, and twins Rumi and Sir, 7. Rowland, 44, and Weatherspoon, 51, are the parents of sons Titan, 10, and Noah, 4.
Matriarch is out now.
