Inside Steve Harvey's Once Fractured Relationship With His Children

While Steve Harvey has been a household name for decades, he was just a regular guy working regular jobs when he married Marcia. But he dreamed of being on TV, even if nothing in his life pointed in that direction. At least that was the case until he won a 1985 amateur competition at a comedy club in Ohio. The prize was $50, but he quit his day job over it. Marcia wasn't okay with that at all. "I'm married, I have twins. I'm supposed to provide for them, but I had to take this chance," he recalled in a 2016 interview with People.

Unsurprisingly, his decision drove a wedge between them. As Harvey struggled to make enough money, his marriage collapsed and he chose to leave them behind to pursue his dreams. With the move, he lost touch with three children. Harvey didn't fully reestablish their relationship until Karli and Brandi were adults and Broderick was a teenager. "I didn't really have my dad full-time in my life until I was 16," Broderick said on his father's talk show, "Steve," in 2019.

The kids were able to forgive their father once they were able to see where he was coming from. "Years later [Karli and Brandi] said to me, 'Dad, we didn't understand why you left us, but we know now you had to go. You didn't just belong to us. You belonged to the world,'" he told People.

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