Source: Sean Gardner / Getty
Manti Te’o, a former standout linebacker at the University of Notre Dame and NFL player, found himself the center of controversy a decade ago regarding a woman he was dating that didn’t exist. Today, Te’o is sharing more about the ordeal and says that attending a Jay-Z concert inspired him to speak about the situation in full.
Manti Te’o sat down with CBS Mornings this past Tuesday (August 16) as part of the media run for the new Netflix documentary, Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist. As he shared his side of the 2012 ordeal, Te’o told the program that him opening up about the controversy surrounding the mystery woman was part of his overall healing process.
“In order for me to kind of heal from this, I needed to reveal it,” Te’o said. “I challenged myself at this time that if anybody asked about it or had questions about it, that I would be open and I would have those hard conversations, and I started to feel the strength that I would get from talking about it.”
As the story went, Te’o shared the news that his girlfriend Lennay Kekua and his grandmother died hours after each other in 2012. According to accounts, Kekua was said to be a student at Stanford University who was in a car accident and suffered from leukemia. Te’o maintained that he never met the mystery woman and only spoke with her online.
Te’o then shared how a Jay-Z quote got the ball rolling on telling his own truth.
“Cam Jordan with the Saints took a bunch of us teammates to a Jay-Z concert,” Te’o said. “And at that concert, Jay-Z opens up with saying these words. ‘You cannot heal what you don’t reveal.’ And it may have been just some random words to everybody, but for me, at that time, it hit me like a ton of bricks.”
Today, Manti Te’o is married with one child and another on the way.
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Photo: Getty
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