The singer Patti LaBelle spoke out this week to reveal why she’s “not interested” in dating again at the age of 77.
Instead of dating, LaBelle told People Magazine, “I’m just living my life like it’s platinum.”
“Thank God I have a lot of people who care for me,” she added. “I live alone with my dog, Mr. Cuddles, and I’m looking for love from everybody. I am.”
LaBelle was married to Armstead Edwards for 31 years before they split in 2000 and finalized their divorce three years later. These days, she has her hands full with her dog and her granddaughters Gia, 6, and Leyla, 4, whose dad is her son Zuri Edwards, 48.
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“I learned to cook from my mom and dad; now they’re learning from me,” said LaBelle. “It’s just fun!”
“Leyla, the little baby, she thinks she has a YouTube cooking channel,” she continued. “She makes sushi, and then at the very end she says, ‘Bye-bye.’ So she thinks she can cook, and I think she will be a good cook.”
While LaBelle is teaching her granddaughters about cooking, they’re teaching her about technology.
“Gia is trying to teach me how to use a smartphone because I have a flip phone,” she said. “She’s 6, and we were at a restaurant last night. I said, ‘Oh, wow, Gia, what are you doing?’ And she said, ‘Grandma, I have 70 something likes’ — I don’t know what she has, but anyway, she was showing me how to work certain parts of the phone.”
“I said, ‘Oh, baby, I don’t know how to do that,'” Labelle added. “She said, ‘That’s right, Grandma. You have a flip phone. I’m going to spend the night one night, and I’m going to show you how to use everything on this phone, okay, Grandma?’ They’re going to teach me. It’s great to have babies.”
LaBelle knew that she had to include photos of her granddaughters when she began working on her latest project, a 20th-anniversary reissue of her first cookbook “LaBelle Cuisine.” Now, she says “they think they’re stars.”
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Throughout the past year in COVID-19, LaBelle said she’s learned not to be selfish.
“I’ve seen people lose everything during these 15 months: their lives, their jobs,” she said. “I’ve learned so much, and I hope we’ve all learned how not to be so selfish. This pandemic has shown me a whole lot of ugly, and now hopefully we’ll bring back the beauty and learn how to treat each other better. It was a curse and a blessing, and I’m now living my life more thoughtfully.”
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