Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson and “Selling Tampa” star Sharelle Rosado have been dating for two years, but the two being together is not a reality Rosado could have imagined. The couple is now engaged and expecting their first child together, a baby girl, soon.
“Never in a million years did I think that we would be together today,” Rosado told Page Six before explaining how she slid in the former NFL player’s DMs on social media.
“He was talking to Tom Brady at the time on his Instagram, and I sent [him] heart eyes and 30 seconds later, he responded back, and then it went from there.”
Rosado, the owner of Allure Realty, has three other children from a previous relationship. Meanwhile, Johnson has seven kids with six other women. She said she was aware of her fiancé’s troubled past with women, including a domestic violence case with his ex-wife, Evelyn Lozada, in 2012.
“It wasn’t a concern,” the real estate broker told Page Six. “You never know what goes on between things. I don’t want to speak on that because I wasn’t there, but Chad is a great person.”
She added, “People go through things, people make mistakes, and you learn from them. If you base things off of mistakes that people made then you’ll never make it in life. Nobody’s perfect.”
Chad Ochocinco and Evelyn Lozado were together between 2010 and 2012. A month after they tied the knot on July 4, 2012, police responded to a domestic dispute after the Miami native headbutted Lozada after an argument, resulting in her getting stitches in her forehead.
Johnson took a plea deal with prosecutors, resulting in a sentence of one-year probation. His arrest led to his release from the Miami Dolphins, and tarnished his career in the NFL.
The former wide receiver touched on his mistakes during the domestic battery case during a Q&A on Twitter in July 2020.
“I lost my temper for once in my life for 3 seconds & it cost me a lifetimes worth of work,” Johnson wrote in response to a fan. “I got it all back plus some after getting a 2nd chance and NOTHING will ever get me out of that happy space again…”
In response to his tweet, Lozado shared her frustration in a nearly six-minute Instagram video on July 16. The former “Basketball Wives” star fought back tears while describing the pattern of abuse she says she endured from Johnson.
“It wasn’t the first time; it wasn’t the first time,” she revealed. “And one of the things that I’m always going to do is I’m always going to live in my truth, whether it’s good, whether it’s bad, whether it’s ugly. I’m not going to let anybody take away my fu–ing truth.”
Lozada added, “This is a lot for me and I just want to heal and I just want to move on from this situation. So if we’re going to speak about this situation, we can talk about the truth. We can be honest and we can talk about everything that happened if you really want to discuss it.”
Rosado, the owner of Allure Realty, has three other children from a previous relationship. Johnson has seven children with six other women.
“Selling Tampa” is streaming now on Netflix.
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