LL Cool J and Wife Simone's Love Story, From Teen Romance to Health Battle and 30-Year Marriage in 40+ Photos

 

LL Cool J once offered to give his wife a piece of his own body to save her life. The love story behind that moment started with a stranger's car window in Queens in 1987.

While the world knows him as a hip-hop legend, the woman by his side has been his true north since they were just teenagers in Queens.

Their journey has been anything but a typical Hollywood fairy tale, marked by a shocking diagnosis that forced a superstar to choose between his career and his soulmate.

A Chance Encounter

It all started back in 1987 when a young LL Cool J — born James Todd Smith — was already making waves in the music scene. But on that particular Easter Sunday, he was just a teenager running an errand in his mother's car through their Queens neighborhood.

He stopped to say hello to a friend on the block. That friend had one question. "Hey, you wanna meet my cousin?" LL Cool J's first instinct was to keep moving — he had somewhere to be. Then he glanced over.

"I looked over and said, 'Oh yeah, I'll meet your cousin,'" he recalled years later on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" That cousin was Simone.

Simone later shared a nostalgic look back at their early days on Instagram, noting they were "17 and 19" when they fell deeply in love growing up in Queens, New York. The pair dated for eight years before finally tying the knot in 1995.

Ladies Love Cool J – His Wife, Not So Much

The early years of marriage weren't without their drama, especially as LL Cool J's persona as a global sex symbol reached its peak. Simone admitted to Oprah Winfrey that she was far from happy when she saw the music video for his hit song "Doing It."

"I remember the girl licking him on the side of his face," she said, completely deadpan. Beside her, LL Cool J insisted he did not remember that. She did not blink.

"I didn't talk to him for two weeks. I was mad. I was so upset over that video because I just felt like, 'You know what? We're married.[..] One of the reasons why I married you [is] because you're sexy. But at the same time, now that you're married, you know there should be some limitations.'"

LL eventually respected her boundaries and came around. "Todd toned it down," Simone shared. "He respected me and toned it down, and I think that we have a special bond, you know, equally yoked."

What neither of them could have anticipated was that the real test of that bond was still nine years away and was much more serious than a music video. In 2004, a routine workout led to a discovery that would turn their lives upside down.

The Foxhole

One day, Simone was in the middle of a session with her personal trainer. She was walking, talking, not thinking twice about anything, until she bumped her shin against a waste basket.

It hit a small knot on her leg. The kind of thing most people would brush off. She did not brush it off. She went to the doctor. And the doctor's news changed everything.

"That's when I found out I had a chondrosarcoma stage three tumor in my right tibia bone," Simone recalled. Chondrosarcoma is a rare cancer that develops in the cartilage cells of the bone. Stage III is the most advanced and aggressive form of the disease.

"In that moment there, I was devastated," she said, her voice breaking before she caught herself. "I'm not going to get emotional!"

The Offer LL Cool J Made in the Doctor's Office

What followed was a 15-hour surgery. Simone's right tibia was removed and replaced with her left fibula, a steel rod, screws, nails, and micro veins from her other leg.

And sitting beside her through all of it was her husband, who, the moment the doctors laid out the procedure, had one immediate response.

"I remember sitting in the doctor's office, and he wanted to give his fibula bone," Simone revealed, "because he felt that his fibula bone would be bigger and stronger."

He wanted to hand over a piece of his own skeleton. The doctors declined, but the gesture was not lost on anyone in that room.

Post-surgery, he did not leave her side — and he controlled the energy of every single person who walked through her door. He cautioned visitors against entering Simone's room crying, insisting she needed "positive energy" to heal.

Then he made a decision about his career that nobody asked him to make.

With a new album on the way and promotions scheduled, LL Cool J pulled back from the road. "You don't abandon someone in that foxhole," he later said. "You gotta be there in that foxhole with them."

Two and a Half Years to Walk Again

The surgery was only the beginning. Simone's recovery stretched across two and a half years — from a wheelchair, to two crutches, to one crutch, to a cane.

When it was over, she looked down at her leg and noticed that the lollipop tattoo she'd had before surgery had been altered by the procedure. That detail did not go to waste.

In 2011, Simone co-founded Simone I. Smith Jewelry, built entirely around that image, a lollipop pendant she named "A Sweet Touch of Hope."

The meaning behind it was deliberate: "The candy represents how sweet life is. The bite represents what cancer does to the individual, their family, their loved ones." A portion of every sale goes directly to the American Cancer Society.

Today, Simone is a 19-year cancer survivor. And when Oprah asked her whether the diagnosis had damaged the marriage, her answer was unambiguous: it "actually made the marriage stronger."

Three Decades Strong

Last August, the couple celebrated a massive milestone: 30 years of marriage. Simone marked the occasion with a powerful social media post reflecting on their longevity.

"Marriage isn't for the weak, it's for the faithful," she wrote alongside a throwback photo. "It takes work, love, listening, picking your battles, being a friend, a prayer warrior, a cheerleader, and a safe place."

And then, the line that said everything about what they had survived together: "We've laughed, cried, prayed, forgiven, and grown — together."

The couple has four adult children — Najee, 36; Italia Anita, 35; Samaria, 30; and Nina, 25. All four are grown and out of the house. And LL Cool J, for his part, is at peace with the next chapter.

And by every measure — the throwback posts, the red carpets, the foxhole — it is still going.