Ne-Yo and his wife Crystal Renay reconcile from the brink of divorce, thanks to Covid-19

Ne-Yo and his wife Crystal Renay have reconciled from the brink of divorce.

The 40-year-old recording artist appeared last week on The Talk, where he revealed that the time together during the lockdown strengthened their bond after they were talking about getting divorced in February.

‘The whole quarantine thing was kind of a blessing,’ the Time Of Our Lives vocalist said. ‘Before the quarantine happened, we were definitely talking divorce.

‘And the quarantine kind of forced us to sit still, block out the noise from the world, you know the world can get very, very loud, and we tend to let the world’s opinion mean more in certain situations than it should.’

The singer-songwriter, whose full name is Shaffer Chimere Smith, said the downtime gave him the opportunity ‘to lock back in with’ Renay and their two boys, Shaffer Chimere Jr., four, and Roman Alexander-Raj, two.

He’s also father to daughter Madilyn Grace, nine, and son Mason, eight, from a past romance with actress Monyetta Shaw.

Ne-Yo said that good communication was at the heart of the rekindled romance – the couple exchanged vows in February 2016 – as he and his spouse had ‘blatantly, painfully, brutally honest’ chats that eventually led to healing in the relationship.

‘We’re actually stronger now than we were before; now, we feel like we can really talk to each other,’ he said on the CBS series. ‘I don’t know when it happened, but we got to a place where we felt like we couldn’t just say it, you know? You’re feeling something, something’s going on, and you know something’s going on, but for whatever reason, you can’t just come out and say it.

‘We got to that place, and that almost broke us,’ the Sexy Love artist revealed.

Renay took to Instagram earlier this month with a Father’s Day post for the artist, dubbing him ‘a king in every meaning of the word.’

She added: ‘We are blessed to call you daddy … We love you for all that you do and all that you are. Enjoy your day because you absolutely deserve it! Happy father’s my Chocolate, my love.’