Dave Chappelle and his wife Elaine Erfe are very private people. The couple, who married in 2001, has kept their children out of the spotlight over the years, even relocating to Ohio. The Saturday Night Live star relocated from New York and Los Angeles to Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he and his family live on a 65-acre farm. Here’s everything you need to know about the unassuming couple and their three children, Sulayman, Ibrahim, and Sanaa. Dave and Elaine’s three children all have unusual names, which are said to be a tribute to Dave’s Muslim faith as well as his wife’s Christian background.
Sulayman, the comedian’s eldest son, was born in 2001 and is a boxing enthusiast. Dave spoke about how his life had changed after the birth of their first child. In 2017, he told CBS News, “Everything changed after I had children.” “I became more serious about my professional life. And I believe that having children gave me more depth as a man.” While little is known about Sulayman, his A-list father told a storey about finding marijuana in his room during one of his comedy specials. “I went into my older son’s room… and I found these notebooks, and I started going through them,” he explained.
“It had all this wonderful poetry in it… Then I went through his drawers, opening his middle drawer to find his rolling papers. I looked down at the papers and thought, ‘Oh, that’s where the poetry comes from.'” Dave and Elaine welcomed Ibrahim in 2003, just two years after the birth of their first son.
It was a few years before the comedian infamously left Chappelle’s Show due to personal issues. “She was with me when I was poor,” Dave said of his long-term marriage to Elaine, before noting that she stayed by his side during the difficult times in 2006. Little is known about Ibrahim, other than the fact that he lives in a small Ohio town with his parents and two siblings. Sanaa, the couple’s youngest child, was born in 2009.
While she keeps a low profile like her two older brothers, her father opened up about watching his children grow up in a 2019 Netflix stand-up special, Dave Chappelle: Equanimity & The Bird Revelation. “I see my age reflected in my children. I returned home from the road not long ago — I had been gone for weeks and weeks, and when I returned, no one was there. “No one in my family thought I might want to see them when I got back,” he recalled. “That was a wake-up call. When my kids were younger and the tour bus arrived at our house, they would spill out. ‘Dad has returned!’ Then, as time passed, they became less interested.
‘Hey, everybody, look: Mr. Promises has returned from the road.’” Young Sanaa appears to be following in her father’s footsteps, as she made a brief appearance in the 2018 hit film A Star Is Born. She played her real-life father’s daughter and walked the red carpet with Dave at the Toronto International Film Festival.
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