‘Gary Owen F—d Up’: Gary Owen Makes Heartfelt Plea to Reunite With Estranged Older Children with Ex-Wife Kenya So They Can Meet His New Twins

Gary Owen has been under fire since reports confirmed he was welcoming twins with his now fiancée a year after finalizing his divorce from Kenya Duke.

Owen and his ex-wife were together for 23 years and married for 17 and had three children. Duke has claimed that her ex’s current lady and mother of his twin boys, Brianna Johnson , was one of the many women the comedian cheated with during the marriage.

After celebrating the boys’ first birthday this week, fans on social media are having a hard time forgetting he has no relationship with his adult children .

“But he cheated on his wife not his children I could understand how it could hurt his children but why is ur children involved in ur marriage problems. Sometimes getting a divorce doesn’t need to be explained. People grow apart did she cheat back it’s so much to this story,” said one person wrote in the comment section on The Shade Room’s Instagram page.

Another said, “Leaving your original family to start a brand new family is nasty work and you don’t even talk to your original kids. It’s a lot of confused people on this post. Go watch his interview on @clubshayshay and it’ll clear up a lot of your confusion Sidenote: The twins are adorable.”

“Gary Owen f#@#d up,” a Facebook comment read.

During his interview on “Club Shay Shay” in May, host Shannon Sharpe asked Owen if he planned to start fatherhood all over again at 48.

“That’s a layered question. [I] didn’t think I wanted to be a father again but not having a relationship with my kids, I was like, I hate that thing like ‘I’mma do it right this time because I don’t think I did it wrong the first time,’” he replied.

The now 49-year-old described himself as the “fun dad” that was “very conscious of how I spoke to them, how we disciplined them. I never put them down.” But sadly, his older three children have no relationship with his young kids and they have never met.

“I mean the twins are awesome. They’re in that idolizing dad phase. They’re young. My [older] kids they don’t know them. They don’t have a relationship with them. I don’t want them to meet them when they’re four or five. That sucks too.”

The “Think Like a Man” star then revealed that he left three times during the marriage and during the first time he took their kids with him and drove from Los Angeles to Dallas, Texas. He said he always came back because “I didn’t want nobody to raise my kids.”

Later in the interview, while discussing the three-year estrangement, Owen said, “It’s a nightmare. It’s like they’re my greatest accomplishments and my greatest failure at the same time.”

His daughter, Kennedy, 21, graduated summa cum laude from college and is preparing to go to graduate school, though he was prevented from coming to her graduation. He revealed that one of his sons, Austin, 23, had a good job working with kids, who “love him” dearly.

The “Ride Along” actor also claims Duke’s oldest son, Emilio, 33, as his own, adding that he works and lives in Ohio with his girlfriend.

“As far [as] like success, I have three kids, never got a phone call ever when they was in school,” Owen explained. “Never had a problem meeting friends. There were never out wilding so we did our jobs as parents. But to see how it’s crashed since the divorce.”

Duke made several public statements calling Owen a “deadbeat” for not having seen his kids since the divorce was final in 2021. Owen admitted that his ex-wife caught him cheating “a couple times,” confirming her many accusations that he cheated repeatedly during the marriage. He said, “But she kept getting all the girls wrong.”

She even claimed that Johnson was one of the women her ex-husband cheated with.

“Divorce is weird. Someone has to be the bad guy, and for whatever reason I became the bad guy in the middle of this divorce, and for the longest time I didn’t say anything,” he told Sharpe.

The “Get Some” podcast host said he feels comfortable speaking about it now because he’s become “emotionally unattached” to Duke.

“I’m not saying I did everything right at all, I’m not innocent here. She knows all my indiscretions and I know here, so I don’t think it going to do anybody good for me to trash her and talk about the things she did. Neither of us was perfect in the marriage.”

After the interview went viral, Duke called out her kids’ father on Instagram for telling “mistruths, lies and false narratives for sympathy and attention without correcting.”

She responded further claiming there were a “few” reasons Owen’s children wanted no contact with him and he knows exactly why.

“I am not sure why any parent would be okay with people talking crazy about their kids when they created the issues or the mother that has try to help (maybe he doesn’t feel I have done enough) When all 3 of the kids aren’t in contact with a parent something that was traumatic to them happened,” Duke wrote on her Instagram.

“No child is waking up to say I don’t want to have contact with a parent. I don’t think these interviews help the relationship but they do help the narrative a celebrity wants out there,” she continued.

‘Gary Owen F—d Up’: Gary Owen Makes Heartfelt Plea to Reunite With Estranged Older Children with Ex-Wife Kenya So They Can Meet His New Twins