The role of a celebrity wife is a hard one, but being a famous ex-wife is even tougher; especially for Mary Lee Harvey, who was married to Steve Harvey for a large chunk of years.
Many famous marriages have ended in divorce. Sometimes the split is amicable and the relationship sustains post-breakup, but more often the split is no bouquet of roses. Steve Harvey’s divorces are no different, especially his split with Mary Lee.
It’s no cut-and-dry case, though. Steve Harvey and Mary Lee Harvey have experienced a huge media firestorm over their divorce, and Mary Lee is still reeling from it, all these years later. While stoking the embers of ex-love is never a great idea, it’s certainly something that’s going to happen after a while. Good or bad, it’s hard to get over someone you shared a decade of your life, as well as a child, with. But Mary Lee is still so hurt that we can’t help but wonder what exactly happened between the two of them. Is Mary Lee justified in harboring these negative feelings that seem to plague her? Or is the pain heightening what really happened?
It Was Messy
Let’s get one thing straight here: everyone involved in this divorce recognizes that it was messy and that it’s not necessarily just Mary Lee’s fault. It seems like the divorce was a mutual thing; Harvey had met someone else whom he eventually wanted to marry, and Mary Lee found proof that he had been cheating on her (which, admittedly, was probably not wrong). Is it the kind of thing that could have been handled better? Probably, though we’re impressed with what Harvey’s lawyers managed to do in terms of the settlement. It might not have been the easiest case, but the assets were certainly clear cut. Much of their joint assets came from Steve Harvey’s work, though Mary Lee was no slouch; she certainly came out on top monetarily, though.
“Mary Lee claimed that she deserved a large percentage of Steve’s assets as well as claims to his future revenues from comedy. Ultimately, the court ruled in favor of Steve: the Steve Harvey Divorce Settlement offered Mary Lee $1,000 dollars per month for child support and disallowed her from retaining all property and business owned by Steve.” And eventually we learned that “court documents show that Mary was paid $40,000 per month until March 2009, after their divorce finalized in 2005. She also received a huge sum of $1.5 million thereafter,” making it absolutely not a case of her ex Steve Harvey leaving her for dead. Not to mention the fact that she was awarded a couple of Steve Harvey’s properties, giving her ample space to stretch out.
Family Matters
It wasn’t just the two of them impacted by the divorce, though. Wynton Harvey was their son and was eventually primarily in Steve Harvey’s care. This is due to a couple of different reasons. First, we need to recognize that Mary Lee was “very overwhelmed and she did not want that…so she asked me to get a ticket and put [Wynton] on the plane to his father. I had to put him on the plane,” which is not something that Mary Lee’s assistant, who’s the speaker of that quote, wanted to do.
Not to mention the fact that Mary Lee’s behavior post-divorce resulted in her getting into some more intense negative emotions and behaviors, including jail time. While it wasn’t for long, it was definitely one of the big events in the post-divorce timeline that tipped people off to the fact that something wasn’t right. In our opinion, she’s still really struggling with the divorce, and that’s no surprise. They were together for a long time and went through a lot together. Steve Harvey has still managed to have an illustrious body of work and is still working and amassing a large net worth today. Between new hosting gigs and business endeavors that are still going strong, the man’s money just keeps growing. His new wife (well, new compared to Mary Lee; Marjorie Harvey is his third and current wife and is the woman that Mary Lee alleges Harvey was cheating on her with) is also contributing to that net worth through her fashion and media work. She’s got just as much success as Steve Harvey does, albeit in her own sector of the arts.
Mary Lee Harvey isn’t pleased with that, which is the thing in all this that doesn’t sit right with us. We would be crushed if our relationship ended this way as well, but there’s no reason to tear down another woman; if anything, Steve Harvey is the one that deserved the judgment. The divorce might have been messy, but it was definitely the right course for Steve and Marjorie Harvey. Mary Lee, unfortunately, is still working on it