
Popular Nollywood actress, Omotola Ekeinde’s husband, Captain Mathew Ekeinde is one of Nigeria’s most senior and respected pilots. People who have met him are often surprised to find he is a man who has no airs around him, despite his accomplishments as one of Nigeria’s most popular and successful pilot. He has been married to Omotola for 22 years and the marriage is blessed with four wonderful kids.
How has marriage been with a celebrity like Omotola?
What are the challenges and issues he has had to contend with?
How did they meet 24 years ago?
Excerpts from the Interview culled from City People by Senior Editor, WALE LAWAL:
Let’s start by congratulating you on that spectacular birthday celebration you put together for your wife, how did you feel with the way everything turned out, seeing your wife being celebrated that way?
It was an honour. It was a very humbling experience to find the caliber of the Esama of Benin and his chiefs, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Tony Elumelu, and a lot of people from the music and movie industry, as well as captains of industries, turning up to come celebrate my wife. Yeah, I was quite impressed and happy, it just shows me that truly, a lot of people do love her and that’s why they all came out.
Everyone saw on the night how happy you were for your wife. How much pressure was it for you supporting her during the preparations leading to the 5-day celebration of her birthday?
Three weeks to the day, she had been planning the whole event with her team. All through that time, her activities in the house was zero, so I got to do all the shopping, I got to do the cooking, the cleaning, and a whole lot of things that she would’ve done. But I had to help her out to enable concentrate fully on her preparations. Her routine then was to wake up in the morning, take her bath, then her team comes about 9 o’clock and they stay in the office. Sometimes, they would go out to the various event venues and may not return until about eleven in the night. So, I was just there the whole three weeks ensuring I give her whatever support she needed, both financial and moral support.
Tell us, how has it been for you being married to a super star of your wife’s status?
You know, I believe our getting married is God’s doing. I say this because I think it really takes one who is understanding to be able to get married to someone like Omotola. For me, yes, sometimes, the pressure gets to me, especially when she’s in demand by a lot of people for different reasons. Personally, for me, it’s not a big deal, I just see it as part of life and I advice her the best way I can. And thankfully, she’s a very focused person who’s always determined to achieve whatever she wants to achieve without getting distracted by people, either by money or whatever, and money has never been the issue. So, people of wealth and status offering her money for one reason or the other has never made her lose her focus in life. Yes, definitely, the pressures are there, pressures of fans, pressures of the fact that we can’t really go out and do what we want to do like regular families. Anytime we step out of our gates, it’s all eyes on us. And that’s why we really cannot go out in public that much. For instance, we can’t go watch the movies like everyone else. To go watch a movie, we have to call the owners or the managers of the movie house. We usually go to Silver bird because we’re used to Guy Bruce, so we’ll call and they’ll arrange a back door for us and put security there for us. So, sometimes it’s stressful, but I’ve gotten used to it, on the 23rd of this month (March) we’re going to mark our 22nd wedding anniversary and I’ll be turning 50 years old that same day.
Do you guys plan to celebrate that? It’s definitely worth celebrating..
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