A summer of breakups continues apace: Tina Knowles-Lawson has filed for divorce from actor Richard Lawson after eight years of marriage. In court documents reviewed by People and filed on Wednesday, she cited irreconcilable differences as the cause for the split.
Knowles-Lawson, better known as Mama Tina — Beyoncé and Solange’s mom — asked the court to restore her name to Celestine Knowles. She added Lawson to her surname after they married in 2015, about two years after their romantic relationship began. Before that, as Lawson previously explained in a 2021 Instagram post, things were platonic: Knowles was best friends with Lawson’s sister, who had introduced the eventual couple nearly 40 years earlier. Though Lawson said Knowles was “one of the most beautiful women” he had ever met, she was also married and pregnant with Beyoncé at the time. “It took 32 years for my attraction to you to come full circle,” he wrote. “It was well worth the wait.” They held their wedding on a 150-foot yacht in Newport Beach, California. Beyoncé, Jay-Z, then-3-year-old Blue Ivy, and Solange were among the wedding guests, and all wore white to see the couple exchange vows.
Before Lawson, Knowles was married to her first husband, Mathew Knowles, for 30 years. She finalized her divorce in 2011. Meanwhile, Lawson and Denise Gordy, mother of actress Bianca Lawson, got divorced in 1989 after 11 years of marriage.
