Faith, Forgiveness & Redemption — Cheryl & Bobby Love’s True Story (FBI Knock, Secret Identity, Marriage, Family & Healing) Inspirational

If the FBI showed up at your door tomorrow and your spouse’s biggest secret exploded—would your faith and love be strong enough to survive it?

What happens when a hidden past collides with a faith-filled marriage—at the front door? In this inspirational and motivational episode of Real Talk with Reginald D, Cheryl and Bobby Love share a powerful true story of redemption, forgiveness, and healing after Bobby’s secret identity—kept for 37 years—was exposed when the FBI knocked.

This episode is packed with motivational speech moments, faith-driven perspective, and real-life marriage wisdom for anyone trying to rebuild trust, restore hope, and start again after betrayal, trauma, or setbacks. If you need an inspirational push to motivate you through storms, this conversation will strengthen your mindset, renew your faith, and remind you that your story isn’t over.

A lot of people are carrying something—secrets, shame, regret, fear of being exposed, fear of losing everything they built. And many couples are trying to figure out how to rebuild trust when life hits hard. This inspirational and motivational conversation speaks directly to anyone who wants a stronger marriage, a stronger mindset, and a stronger faith—because it shows what it looks like to motivate yourself through the storm, face consequences, and still rebuild a life with God at the center. If you’ve ever wondered whether redemption is real, this episode is your motivational speech in conversation form.

Press play now for this inspirational motivational speech-level testimony—and let Cheryl & Bobby’s story motivate you to believe that forgiveness, healing, and redemption are still possible.

The Redemption of Bobby Love Book: Purchase on Amazon or

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Transcript

Reginald D: Welcome to Real Talk with Reginald D.

I'm your host, Reginald D.

On today's episode, I have two special guests,

Cheryl and Bobby Love.

Cheryl and Bobby's story is a powerful story rooted in faith,

family, love, and redemption. It's a journey through secrets, storms,

forgiveness, and the kind of faith that can hold a life together when everything else is falling apart.

Sheryl and Bobby Love's story has been on Oprah's own channel and in magazines and newspapers all over the United States.

For 37 years, Bobby lived under a different name. He built a life, a marriage, and a family,

all while carrying a truth he didn't share with his wife.

And then one day, the FBI knocked on the door.

So today we're diving into the faith that carried them,

the forgiveness that rebuilt them,

and the healing that transformed two hearts into a testimony that is now blessing the world and showing us what redemption really looks like.

Welcome to the show, Sheryl and Bobby.

cheryl Love: Thank you.

Bobby Love: Thank you.

cheryl Love: So happy to be here.

Reginald D: Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

So, Bobby, I'll start with you.

Tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what your childhood is like.

Bobby Love: First, I want to say I love that introduction that you just gave us.

Speaker D: I grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Bobby Love: It was the Jim Crow South. And I went through my ups and downs down there, and my trouble also started down there.

Reginald D: Right,

so now you grew up in Greensboro. Like I say, I saw the documentary on.

So take us on the journey of your life and how things transpired when the trouble came. And then it got you to a place where you were, were,

you know, in prison and things like that. So just take on the journey of your life.

Bobby Love: At 13 years old, I went to a concert and said some things I shouldn't have said,

and the police grabbed me, and I ended up with disorderly conduct charge.

But I didn't go to court.

And one night,

they came to my house, and I told my mother about it. I never told her that this had happened.

cheryl Love: Concert. It was. It was the Sam Cooke concert.

Bobby Love: Yes, it was a Sam Cooke concert.

Reginald D: Man, how you do that at Sam Cooke concert?

Speaker D: Pardon me?

Reginald D: How do you do that at Sam Cooke concert?

Bobby Love: Oh, Sam Cooke walks off the stage.

cheryl Love: Man.

Bobby Love: Back then, they wouldn't let you dance. They wouldn't let you have fun at the concerts. You know, just like in high school back then, we would go up in the stands, and if we made too much noise, they told us the next day at school that they're not going to tolerate this.

You had to deal with it, you know.

Reginald D: Right.

Bobby Love: So from there, I had other troubles. I wanted to look nice.

I would go out to the golf course and I would caddy.

That was slow money, and I wanted to get fast money.

So I continue doing things that I shouldn't have done, you know, done,

you know,

stole a car.

I used to get people's pocketbooks, I see, in the cars and stuff. And I was just growing up in fast times at that time. I labeled myself I was a thief.

Speaker D: And few people was aware of it. And then I had trouble in school.

After having trouble in school, I had a probation officer and felt that this was the best thing for me to go down to Morrison Training School.

I could learn a skill.

I would be there undetermined amount of time.

And so that's where they sent me.

After being there for maybe about two or three months,

I came down there. It was still summer.

I would just kind of plot what I was going to do to get away from this place.

You're living with a bunch of guys and everybody want to be the king.

So I was in fights, and if you can't fight, man, you find yourself washing somebody's underwear.

And I wasn't about to let that happen.

So on the weekdays,

they would have maybe one counselor in the dormitory.

You had two large wings with about maybe anywhere from 30 to 35 inmates in single rooms. And the guy would come around and punch the clock every hour and stuff like that.

So I figured on the weekdays I could slip out of there and get to the next town and get me a bus or something like that. And sure enough,

I think it was one Tuesday or Wednesday night. That's what I did.

I walked the railroad tracks to the next town.

And the next town was Hamlet.

I got on a bus and I went to Greensboro.

But when I got to Greensboro,

I saw some of my friends and they told me,

man, the cops are looking for you.

So I'm like, wow.

So I went out to a friend of mine's house, stayed out there, and after a couple of days,

he got me enough money for me to get on the bus to Washington, D.C. i had a brother and at the time that lived in Washington, D.C.

so I went to his house. And now I'm living in Washington, D.C. this was back in 1967.

So I'm living in his house now. And I got a job.

I was working for a candy company.

I was doing their mailing and stuff like that.

You know,

they used to leave the safe open,

and I decided to go in there one day.

Then Again, there's more trouble, you know.

So I stole my brother's car.

His wife told me, because they was raising three sons.

So his wife told me, marie, she said, you got to go.

She don't want this kind of behavior around her children. I can understand that.

So I went over to live with my sister.

I had a sister there, too.

Her name is Irma.

So I goes over and I live with Irma. First thing Irma said to me is, you're going back to school.

So I would go to school first. I went to a school called Spingon.

That's where Dave Bing, basketball player, had gone.

And they had all these trophies and pictures of him in the school.

But I didn't particularly care for that school. So I went to Easton at Eastern.

It was like a hangout.

People sit outside all day.

And when I got my first reporting period,

the teacher that was teaching me English,

she gave me a C.

I didn't come to her class maybe three or four times.

So I said, this is not school.

I decided to go to another school. And I went over to McKinley Tech.

Over there, they had a principal that was a.

He'd been the principal of the year, like three out of five years.

His name was I.W. rose.

He was a very nice man. And we won the basketball tournament one day. They called it the Inner High basketball championship.

And we won that.

We lost the football play to the same school.

It was so funny. We went. We played a school called Gonzaga.

No, no, I'm sorry. Cadoza. Cadoza High school in Washington, D.C.

so we beat them in basketball,

but they beat us in football the same year.

So it was a good time, you know, I was really enjoying living in Washington.

And my brother ended up getting me in an apartment.

So now I got my own apartment.

And I'm enjoying life to the fullest.

I'm working at McDonald's,

going to school. I'm enjoying life.

But I had some friends that was doing stuff that shouldn't be doing.

And I ended up getting a job in Washington. You could buy yourself a job,

whereas you go to this agency,

they'll send you to a job.

And your first salary goes to them,

the agency.

And then rest of your money you make is for you.

So I went there and they gave me a job working at a place called Clancy's. It was a topless bar,

and across.

Bobby Love: The street was the bus depot.

And a lot of the bus drivers used to come into the place.

And then they started sending flyers to the surrounding colleges around there.

They used to sell cheap Beer and.

Speaker D: They used to sell pizza. And this was the stuff that attracted a lot of the people to come into Clancy's.

And I worked there for, I don't know, for, I guess, six, seven months at that time. But I also got a job through the school.

Whereas you could work 20 hours a week as long as your credits are up to par as you're working to graduate.

So I also worked that job and I was working in the Pentagon.

So the first time I go to the Pentagon, man, I'm like, wow, you know, this is really nice, you know.

And they gave me the responsibility of passing out checks to the hundred and some odd people that worked in the Pentagon.

I worked for the agency called nest.

It was. It was a big agency.

And so passing out some of those checks,

this lady would say to me, could you take it to the bank and cash it for me?

Excuse me.

So.

Bobby Love: I would go and cash people's checks.

Then one time,

some people wasn't there at the job.

So I got these checks and what am I going to do with them?

I cashed them and I kept the money.

I got home free from that. It was just that they asked me about it and I said I left it in their office on their desk.

They said they don't see it. Who else saw you leave them there?

Well, I told one of the ladies that I was leaving them there.

She didn't really look deceited. I left them there, but I told her I was leaving them there.

So got through with that.

On and on. I picked up a little other stuff, but I ended up getting a gun.

Speaker D: From a friend that worked at Clancy's.

We would go into some stores,

mainly grocery stores,

and we robbed a grocery store up there near Howard University on Georgia Avenue.

And we got away with that.

We got a little small amount of money. I think it was about seven, $8,000.

You know, we came back and one of the guys that we went to his house to split up the money,

we had to give his girlfriend a piece of the money also. Even though she didn't go with us.

Like, man, why?

She was the person that put it all in motion and told us how to do it and what to do and stuff like that.

We hit out of the counters that they had, you know, cash out counters, they had about five, but only three of them was working.

And we hit those three and we got out of there in about nine, 10 minutes.

We didn't stay in that long, you know. And from there,

1969,

President Nixon was being inaugurated and it was January 20th.

We figured, and I think you might see that or read that in the book,

that Nixon,

his inauguration was going to put all the police away from where we were going.

So we was going to hit this drug store,

and we would go over there.

We had the money. We was coming out of the place.

I had the gun,

and cops shot me.

So I got shot in my behind him.

And the bullet came out near my strogle,

and it knocked me out. So by that bullet knocking me out.

When I woke up,

they was handcuffing me and trying to get me in the ambulance.

I said, why'd you shoot me? What did I do?

You know, playing stupid.

And he said, you know what you did? And they picked up the gun. They had the gun, everything like that. And I looked at myself,

and actually the bullet went through me.

So now I'm saying, well,

get to the hospital. D.C. general,

that wasn't the best hospital in D.C. at the time, but that's where it took me. And I get in there, and I'm still acting stupid, and I'm telling them, you're not gonna operate on me.

You're not gonna cut me, and that kind of stuff.

But I would.

Oh, blue.

They would put.

Bobby Love: They would put.

Speaker D: You know how they knock you out for surgery?

So the guy went behind me and he was putting this over my mouth.

Next thing when I woke up after that,

I was laying there with tubes in both arms.

Had a thing over here so I wouldn't get pneumonia.

It was, you know, flooding and keeping that out of me.

Bobby Love: And I stayed in jail for about.

Speaker D: Five, almost six months.

I recovered in the hospital. Then they put me in DC jail.

In the meantime, they broke into my house.

They broke into my apartment, stole all my clothes.

They beat up the guy that I also was sharing my apartment with.

And I kept writing writs to the judge to get out of jail.

I was a porpoise.

I had no money.

I had nowhere to live.

I told him about my apartment being broken into because my brother had visited me while I was in the hospital.

And he told me about my apartment being robbed and ransacked and everything. And told him about the guy getting beat up and stuff. He was in a hospital,

but I didn't know it and where he was.

So from there,

I finally last got a hearing on my Ritz. I kept writing,

and when they brought me to the court,

they asked me if I had any place to live.

So I had one of my friends to say that I could live there. As I waited for my case to come to trial.

So they let me out on my own reconnaissance. So I was out of jail for about.

Just about five months,

four months, something like that.

Then when I went back to jail, I pleaded guilty.

My lawyer told me it was the best for me to plead guilty,

because if I go to trial and I lose,

they would send me to Lawton.

But if I plead guilty, they would probably send me to the Lawton Youth center part.

They might face each other.

They called it the big house. They called this the small house.

So I went there and I stayed there 13 months.

But in this time of being there,

I didn't learn nothing.

I was still thinking that I could outdo the man. I was smarter than the next person.

So now I hooked up with some friends and we came down to North Carolina.

We hit a savings alone and we got away with that. Got back to D.C. and everything like that.

We came down a couple more times. We had to run,

but we got away.

We didn't hardly get any money,

only maybe a couple of hundred dollars.

And we ran out of there. We got to the car and everything like that,

and it gave us a feeling of,

we're going to do this.

Bobby Love: Again at another time.

Speaker D: So we went back to D.C.

we kind of regrouped, and then it was two other guys, two new guys that came with me this time down to North Carolina,

and we looked for another place.

The places that we would like to go to were the places that was not in the inner city.

The places we would like to go to were like out kind of on the edge of another county or something like that.

So we went to this place that was in the inner city,

and we went in there and we went out the back door. After we got a few dollars, we didn't really get a whole lot of money.

And by the time we got to our car, we looked back and they was looking at us out the back door, running to the car.

So when we got to the car,

we was able to get to the next city, which was, I think, Salisbury,

and that's when they pulled us over. And the rest is kind of history. With got 25 years. My partner got 25 years. Two of my friends were sent to.

Bobby Love: A youth camp in Raleigh.

Speaker D: You say you're in Raleigh yourself now, right? Yes, sir.

Bobby Love: Yeah.

Well, we went to Central Prison in Raleigh,

and I got a 25 to 30.

My partner, Jack Dan, he had a 25 to 30.

And the other two went to the youth camp.

And my friend cut. He only stayed a year,

and he was sent back to D.C.

sorry to say, but he has since passed.

I found out that he didn't really take care of himself like he should have. He had some illnesses that he didn't.

Speaker D: Try to take care of,

and he passed.

And my other friend that went there,

he now lives in Raleigh.

I'm here in Georgia, and my other friend is in Maryland. And all of us are free. All of us are doing good, taking care of themselves, have family and stuff like that.

cheryl Love: Yeah.

Reginald D: So, Bobby, let me ask you this. So now you in prison,

right?

What was it about the prison life that impacted you the most?

Was it the structure, the isolation, or the loss of identity?

Bobby Love: Oh, boy.

Well,

I made it up in my mind,

okay? You know, you go to diagnostics,

so in diagnostics, they take you all through all these tests,

try to see how smart you are, that you understand this or don't understand that.

So I feel like I impressed them because they told me, they said, we're going to send you to the hospital to work.

cheryl Love: So.

Bobby Love: So going to the hospital to work, you know, that was very good in my eyes.

And when I got there, after a few months of working in the hospital,

they brought in a guy that was paralyzed.

Speaker D: He was shot,

and the bullet was still in his back of his spine.

So working with this guy for a year helped me to get to green clothes, which is honor grade.

So once I got to honor grade, you know, I felt like I had done a good job with this guy. This guy walked out of there.

We used to exercise this guy every day. We treated him for bed sores.

We got all of those taken care of. And the funny thing about it, his name was Bobby Marsh. I'll never forget the guy. He walked out of there on crutches with a lift on his shoe.

But he was walking, he was satisfied. And he was so glad of that because he had been in a hospital outside of Raleigh after he got shot.

And they basically kind of neglected him,

you know,

that he had those bed sores.

So we got him to a place where he was good and they paroled him and he went back to his hometown, far as I know at that time,

right?

Reginald D: So now come a point, Bobby, where you in prison, you say, well, I got to get out of here, though. Tell me a little bit about that.

Bobby Love: Okay. This was after going around to different places.

They sent me to this camp. They sent me to this camp. They sent me to this camp. They sent me to this camp. I ended back at Triangle. Triangle used to be down the hill from Central Prison.

It was an honor grade camp.

So I came there and I worked in the canteen.

They took me out. I worked upstairs in the office building.

They took me out. They put me in the kitchen. I worked in there because I had worked in the kitchen at Asheboro. They took me out.

Speaker D: Then they put me on the road.

Bobby Love: When they put me on the road,

you know, cleaning up and picking up garbage and doing a sling blade with the grass growing a little high around the edges.

I said, man, I'm not. I can't do this. I'm better than this.

And it gave me a feeling of.

Speaker D: This is not going to continue to happen. I went out there. It was still warm in late September, I think it was.

So now it's October.

Starting to get a little cold out here. They gave me a coat for wearing. And it got to be,

I don't know, maybe 30 some degrees a couple of days, wind blowing and stuff. And they still sending us out there with a sling blade. Cutting grass on the edge of the highway and stuff.

I remember somebody dropping a milkshake practically out of their car on my feet or near my feet.

And that's when I started to think,

started to watch and pay attention to a few things as I tried to say to myself, you know, I'm going to leave this place at some point.

Reginald D: Okay, so you finally leave.

Bobby Love: Yeah, you get out of there.

Reginald D: And what was your process?

Bobby Love: Okay, my process was I had on double set of clothes.

See, I had gained some passes to go out.

I went shopping a couple of times.

I was on the radio, actually, with Shaw University every Wednesday night.

I had. My handle was Frankie Baby, like Frantic.

Speaker D: Foca in New York.

Bobby Love: So I would play music for an hour on Wednesday nights.

So anyway,

I was gaining their trust for me.

And I had a counselor, a lady counselor.

She would talk to me periodically and ask me how things are going and stuff like that. So anyway, getting back to when I decided to make sure I can do.

Speaker D: This,

I used to watch the guards debate where we used to go out of every morning.

We used to go out around 7:30 and they would call,

you know, announce it over the intercom that all the guys on the road be down at the gate at 7:30.

And so they would always have this nice brother. He didn't give you a whole lot of **** over nothing.

And he worked on that gate a lot. And one day I tested him. And I put my coat,

the coat they issued me, I put it in a bag to see if they would check me out and see what was in the bag.

I Just went through the gate, no problem.

So now my feeling is I'mma put my leather coat that I have,

which I go out on passes with, in the bag,

see if he'll stop me.

And I had a pair of shoes. I bought some little slides, basically no strings. And that day that I decided to do it was my nephew's birthday. Two days after my birthday, November 8, 1977,

I came to the gate, called my name, they checked it off. I'll get on the bus. Went to the back,

and as the bus is going and leaving there, going to the garage. They used to take us to a garage.

He's going up this long street and he's going to turn onto the street. More traffic. But early in the morning like that, it's not that much traffic.

But there was some woods as he made that turn.

And I had seen those woods, and I knew that you could come out on the other side of those woods.

So I jumped off the back of the bus, ran into those woods, and took off the clothes that I had on the top of my personal clothes,

came out on the other side and I started to run.

Now, this area was not the area that I knew people.

I didn't know people, but,

you know, it was a white area.

So I'm going through there and I'm just trying to get away, get away, get away, get away. And I finally last got to a point where I could see my people from the projects,

you know,

started asking questions about how can I get to,

but where can I get to?

I wanted to get downtown to the bus station.

So people say, yeah, well, we going that way. And it's gonna be a minute, man. You're a long ways from down there. It's downtown.

So I'm like, oh, okay. And I just kept running and running and crossing over and crossing over and running. And I got there about took me about almost three hours to get there.

But when I got there,

you know, I felt like God was helping me with this.

I didn't tell you, but when I used to talk to my mother, my mother would always say, she's praying for me. Pray for yourself.

Go to church. If they have church in there, go to church.

And I did that also.

I'm now at the point where I'm sweating,

sweating bullets.

cheryl Love: Okay.

Speaker D: I'm kind of afraid that they gonna ride up on me and stuff like that,

but I kept running. I kept running and I tried to make myself look like a part of the scenery as much as possible.

I ran into a man, an older guy, and he looked at me and he said something like, I hope you're not in any trouble.

And like I said, I'm sweating. So I said, can you help me out?

And the man gave me $30.

I said, wow, that's really gonna help. And when I got to the bus station,

you know you have those big pillows where people play chess and checkers and stuff like that. So I was standing over there by one of them. But I'm checking out the cars that's passing by.

But I said, I'm not going into this bus station. I said, they might have my picture there already.

And if anything could happen.

But I asked a guy on the street to buy me a ticket, a one way ticket to New York City.

I gave him a 20 bill of that $30. He went in. And then I thought to myself, what am I, stupid? That man might go out the other.

Bobby Love: Side and don't come back.

Speaker D: But he came back and gave me my ticket and tried to get. I said, you know, you keep that man.

So now I'm waiting. And he told me the bus was going to be there after 11,

I think around 11:10, something like that. Sure enough, that bus pulled up.

I still waited because people were lining up to get on this bus other than me.

And when they got to maybe the last three people or so, that's when I came over in the line,

got on the bus. I went to the back on the opposite side of the driver, kind of got down in the seat that you can see only the top of my head, basically.

And I looked out the window and I didn't see nobody. And I was so glad when that bus pulled off. We went to Durham, then we went to Virginia.

I was so happy.

So now I'm on my way New York City.

I was singing Stevie Wonder's song,

Living for the City.

Reginald D: So, Bobby, so you get to New York City?

cheryl Love: Yes.

Reginald D: Now you changed your identity?

Speaker D: Yes.

Reginald D: You know, and your name to Bobby Love.

Bobby Love: Right, right.

Reginald D: Why Bobby Love?

Bobby Love: I was going to take the identity of a kid that I knew in dc.

I thought I could probably get to New York, maybe come down there, get some ID in dc,

then go back up to New York. But this lady.

I walked all over the streets for the next two or three days after getting to New York.

I walked past the Social Security office and I said,

I know that they.

Speaker D: Didn'T give you your Social Security card. They sent it to your address.

So I go in there,

I asked the lady,

I said, I would like to fill out an application for a Social Security card.

I wouldn't sit down and filled it out,

and I brought it back to her.

She looked at it and she saw my address. And she said,

you live in Washington, D.C.

i said, no. I said, I used to. I'm living here now. I said, but that's the address that I have.

I said, and you send it there, and I'll at some point go down there and get it.

She said, okay, well, I'll give it to you now.

And I said, oh,

thank you, thank you, thank you. That was another God moment, too,

because I felt that God was ordering my steps.

I got away from North Carolina and I got on the bus, rode all the way up here, by the way. There was a girl that had talked to me on the bus as I come to New York.

She got off from Philadelphia. But she was the one that asked me what was my name?

And I said, bobby.

I didn't say love, I just said, bobby.

And we rolled on up. She was upset and talking about how this guy had dated her and brought her down to North Carolina, some parts of North Carolina. But she was upset that he lied to her, that he didn't have an apartment.

He lived with his mother and his other family, and he wanted her to live with him and all this stuff.

And she talked about then. She was still upset.

But anyway, I get back and I get the Social Security card. Now, the Social Security card is a part of the ID that I can probably get somewhere else.

Okay?

And sure enough, I would use that. And I ended up going up to Monticello, New York, where they made that movie Dirty Dancing.

And so I'm coming up there to work.

They only giving me a day or two.

I'm paying room and board because I'm living up there. They got a house for all the people that work up there. And I was up there until about right there, maybe a couple of days after Christmas in 1977.

And then I came on back down to New York.

I would still walk, looking around, looking around, looking around.

I walked into a.

What you call it, the Salvation Army.

The guy said, come on in, come on in.

So I come in there and I said, yeah, I like a room, you know, and say, yeah, no problem, no problem.

They had a dormitory style. So he gave me a cart.

He said, yeah, you the last one. I said, okay.

So I had some dinner and I went to sleep that night. I was able to take a shower and stuff like that.

They woke me up that morning and said to me,

come on, you got to come to the meeting.

I'm like, excuse me, what meeting?

He said, this is Alcoholic and Anonymous and Drug Anonymous.

I said, I'm not alcoholic, I'm not on drugs.

He said, well, if you're not on drugs and you're not alcohol, you gotta go.

So I asked the guy, I said, can I get breakfast?

So he said, let me look in the kitchen and see if anything is left.

So he did give me something, but I had to get out of there, you know.

So now I had asked them also about a job. And so they said they only work with the people that's residents of that particular Salvation Army.

So he couldn't tell me nothing. He said, but maybe if you go downtown to the Wall street area,

you might be able to pick up a job down there.

So I asked him how to get there, which was going further downtown in New York.

And I went there and I saw this agency called Martinez Unemployment Agency,

and I went in there. The day that I went in there, he said, I have nothing, I have nothing.

As I was coming in there,

he would tell me to come back the next day,

be there at 8 o' clock in the morning.

And I was there 8 o' clock in the morning. I had rode the subway all night staying warm because it was getting cold.

And then he sent me to one of these restaurants that cater to the people that work in, do the trading and stuff.

cheryl Love: Money District.

Speaker D: Yeah, with the district. Anyway, he sent me to this restaurant, it was called Garino's.

So I was busting tables, it was paying me $20, 250 for Martinez and the rest was my money.

I talked to the lady and I asked the lady if I could just come there without going back to Martinez so I could have the whole $20 for myself.

So she said, why you need,

you know. And I asked her for a full time job. She said, we can't do that. We don't do enough work. So she gave me all kind of excuses why she couldn't.

But she said, okay, you come tomorrow and I'll let you know each time that you come, whether you can come back the next day. And I did that for about maybe a month,

month and a half.

And from there one of the people from Garino, one of the brothers,

he saw me there and he asked me if I would like to work in the mornings,

make sandwiches.

So I would be on the line where they had a line.

And you put the meat, you put the bread, you put mayonnaise on it, you put mustard on it, that's like that. And so it's like we got a line of people that's doing this.

So I would be at the end of the line and I would do that also.

And I did that for about five months,

maybe less than that. But anyway,

he was impressed with me and coming to work and stuff like that.

So told me one day he said, listen, I want to take you uptown to 660 Madison Avenue to work in their cafeteria there.

That's in the Hertz building.

This building was where Hertz rental car was the main office at that time. So I came up there and I was cleaning up. I was making coffee.

I was emptying the trash stolen with my jobs, you know,

from there,

this lady kept staring at me, kept staring at me.

Come to find out she was from human resources.

And I'm thinking this lady must know me or maybe seen my picture or something.

But it wasn't that.

One day when I was on a break, she came over and sit at the table and introduced herself.

She said she was from human resources and that we have a better job than you cleaning up up here down in our warehouse.

I said, excuse me.

Felt like this lady,

I don't know from her,

you know, experiencing with people and seeing me every day up there and stuff like that.

Felt like God sent her to me.

God told her to come over and talk to me.

And sure enough, she asked me if I would like a job working in the warehouse at that time. I said, no,

no, no.

I didn't want to work in a warehouse, fill out application and all that stuff when they investigate this application and stuff.

So I said no.

But she didn't stop. She's very persistent.

She even talked to the. The manager, his name was Doug,

said. Doug said, bob, it's a good job.

He said, you'd be making more than what you're making here.

I was happy to make that little 175 off the books that I was working in there.

But the lady, like I said, she just kept coming back and telling me that you would have benefits if you have to go to the doctor, a hospital, anything like that.

It would be covered with your insurance. Some. You have this, you have that.

Sure enough, I went down there and I checked the place out. And two weeks later, I started working at Hertz.

I was doing the shipping. I was packing stuff and sending it to the different offices. They would give me a requisition and tell me what this person needed, this person needed.

I would get the stuff and I would pack it and send it out to Oklahoma, Send it out to Texas, send it out to Ohio, different places around the country.

Then we had international shipping also,

whereas we sent it over to Europe. Different places over there also.

Hertz, rental cars, you know,

notepads, requisition forms, all that kind of stuff.

Reginald D: Right.

So, Bob, let me ask you this.

During the 37 years, you lived under another name, another man, obviously, because you're working, you're doing honest living. Was there ever a moment you almost confessed voluntarily, like, man, this is a lot to live with.

Or you said, I'm gonna keep pushing with what I got?

Bobby Love: I said I was gonna keep pushing.

Once I Met Cheryl in 1983, 84.

And we started to get together and talk and hang out and go to the movies and concerts and stuff like that.

And then she got pregnant.

I had always said to myself, I want to be married by the time I'm 30,

that I want a family.

It was eight of us that lived.

Speaker D: Way back, you know, as I was born back in 1950.

I had a brother, a couple of brothers that was already grown at that time.

So it was eight of us. And I enjoyed that. You know, my mother had five kids. My mother had three kids by my father.

So I like the camaraderie of being around my brothers and sisters. I knew I wanted to have children.

So when Cheryl got pregnant, I said, hey, let's get married. Proposed to her, and we got married. Then two years later, we planned the next daughter and the next child.

It was another daughter.

And so we were. Said we was going to stop. But, you know, lo and behold,

11 years later, here comes two more. My. My fraternal twins.

And that was it for sure, because she said, no more.

cheryl Love: Yeah.

Reginald D: So you start the life.

Good life, you know, you married with a beautiful wife, a family.

Everything's going good. Hardworking man, providing for your family in the church, I guess y was in the church, things like that.

Everything is, you know,

good life, basically, it's good.

And how did you feel the morning the FBI stormed your room?

And what went through your mind about Cheryl, your kids, and the life you built after they discovered where you were?

Bobby Love: I was devastated.

I was.

I was so.

Oh, man, I was devastated.

I couldn't believe that this was happening.

I didn't feel like I did anything wrong for this to happen.

But as I,

you know, went through the process with them and they, you know,

two of my kids was back in the back. One of my sons had already gone.

Speaker D: To high school, and Cheryl was.

cheryl Love: She was ready for work that morning.

Speaker D: Yeah, she was very upset. She said Screamed at me, did you kill somebody?

cheryl Love: I was like.

Because what happened was when the knock came at the door,

Bobby was still in the bed. I was up drinking a cup of tea, and it was this really loud knock at the door. So I went and opened the door.

You know, who is it? Who is it? And when I opened the door, FBI flung open, you know,

burst open the door,

and they said, stand back, ma'. Am. Stand back.

Oh, my God. What's going on? We don't know what's going. And when they said that,

that was, like, the worst thing I could hear. Like,

you don't know who this man is. Stand back.

Like, you don't know why we're here.

It was just so shocking. And I looked at my husband. I looked at Bobby, and he was, like, not really saying anything. He just held his head down. And I'm like, bobby, what's going on?

What happened? What? What? What? What did you do? And I said, did you kill somebody? He was like.

He really wasn't saying anything. And then he finally said something. He said to me. He said, no. He said, this was before you. This was before the kids. He said,

it was all before you. And I'm like, what? What? In the office say. He didn't want me to talk.

It was just a mess that morning. And Bobby's a diabetic. So I said, he needs his medicine. He needs this. They said, no, we can't give him his medicine now.

He said. I said, well, I went past him anyway and gave him some cookies. I said, he has to eat something. He had to eat something.

And so, you know, gave him the cookies.

But it was just a crazy morning. Everything was.

It was wild. It was wild. My other two kids was in the back.

So, you know, at that time, it was like police was just shooting guns and things like that. And so I want to make sure. I said, my kids are in the back.

Please don't. You know. So they went back there looking for guns and things like that,

and they saw that there was no guns or whatever, so they kind of calmed down with everything. And they was talking to Bobby, and they asked him, you know, what did they say to you, honey?

Speaker D: They asked me. Well, they told me and said, you had a long run.

You know,

they said,

but it's over.

At first, when they, you know, asked me my name and stuff like that,

I said, bobby love. He said, no, no, no, your real name, your given name.

And I told him, walter Curtis Miller.

And like Cheryl said, they went to the back.

They stood around me they just stayed right there around me. Two of them, maybe three.

And my bed was in the living room. You walk right in, and the bed was right there because. Because we had my. My son.

Bobby Love: Yeah.

Speaker D: And we had three bedrooms in the back. One son slept next to him, and then the middle son and then back was my daughter.

And they came up there crying and stuff like that, you know.

And finally last I said, you know,

I said everything was going to be all right. I didn't know what Cheryl was going to do in terms of whether Steve was going to go and start filing for divorce or anything like that.

So they told me that they was going to walk me out of the door to put the handcuffs on me. They didn't want to put the handcuffs on me in front of my children,

my son Justin and my daughter Jessica.

cheryl Love: And they're going to let him go out without his coat. And I said, wait a minute, he needs his coat. He needs it. And it was like, okay, okay, okay.

So I said, yeah, he got to put his coat on his cold.

So they were listening somehow. But, yeah, that morning was really. That was a rough morning.

Reginald D: Right. So I get to the one major point. I want to talk to you a little bit, Shirley.

cheryl Love: Okay.

Reginald D: So you built the whole life of Bobby not knowing his secret,

right? When the truth came out.

What were the very first internal words you said to yourself in that moment? And what was the very thing you said to God?

cheryl Love: I said, my God.

I said, that's what it's been all this time?

Because I had a gut feeling that my husband was keeping something from me.

I didn't know what it was.

And I said, does he have another family? I was thinking things like that because there was certain little things that would happen. Like Bobby, he didn't like to take pictures.

And to me, I take pictures all the time. I'm like, what is. Come on. Yes, we are going to take some pictures. We going to take pictures. And he gets so mad.

I had took a picture of him one time, and he got so mad at me. And I'm like, you all really upset with me because I took your picture.

What is wrong with you? So that had me, like, thinking, that's one thing. I said, that's a little weird.

So then I would also have this dream, this recurring dream all the time with this thick, thick rope, like a rope from an anchor, like if an anchor and on a boat,

coming from Bobby's mouth. And I'm like, what is that?

To me, it's like he has something to tell me. But he won't let me know what it is.

So that dream would come. I must have had that dream about three times.

Okay, that's another thing.

And then sometimes I'll catch him in thought.

Just quiet. I'm like, honey, you okay?

What's wrong? You need to talk about something.

No, I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm like,

something is not right.

I said, I couldn't find. No. No evidence of another family.

Never. Nothing like that. Bobby go to work, work two and three jobs,

come home with the money.

So I didn't see nothing where he was with another person, another woman, no calls, nothing like that.

So I'm like, I don't know what it is, but it's something. I just can't place it. Why this man? I cannot place it, but there's something that's going on. So when that happened, I tell a story that I almost even felt a relief.

I said, God, I thank you, because this is what it is. This right here. What's going on right now.

I'm going to find out what's going on.

And that's what it was.

That's what it was, Bobby.

Reginald D: Something about a. A woman's gut, man, when they feel something.

cheryl Love: Intuition.

Reginald D: You Y. Something about the intuition.

cheryl Love: Yes.

Bobby Love: I didn't know those pictures was gonna end up. That's why I didn't. Those pictures.

Reginald D: Right. Exactly. Exactly. I would have took them either. So, Cheryl.

cheryl Love: Yes.

Reginald D: I really admire your strength. I really admire your strength.

Many people will have walked away immediately.

What did God speak to you in those days? Right after Bobby's arrest?

cheryl Love: Right after Bobby's arrest,

I was with him the whole time. And at that moment before that, I was a little upset with Bobby because he would come to church and he would sit in the back, and I would say, honey, let's go up to the author.

If they, you know, when they asked for. Also call, let's go up together. And he said, no, I feel so hypocritical. I said, about what? That's. You know. And he just would not let me know what was going on with him.

So that was kind of frustrating me. But once he had got arrested,

at that moment,

I was feeling such a love for him, and I didn't want him to harm his self. I wanted him to know at that moment I was not going to leave him.

I was not thinking about leaving him. I was with him. I wanted him to know, I'm with you. God is with you. We're gonna get through this. That's what I wanted him to know when he first got arrested.

But as I started thinking about it and stuff, I started feeling a little. I said, all this time, I said I didn't know. I said, God, people must think I'm real crazy.

Like I'm ashamed, I'm still bad and you know,

so I had to go through my things. But I had remembered a dream that I had that my mother had came to me in this dream.

And in that dream she looked so beautiful. My mother passed away when I was nine years old. But in this dream she looked so beautiful. And she said to me, everything is going to be okay.

It's going to be all right. Because I had thought about leaving Bobby before because he had, you know, it was seems like he had shut down and wasn't really like communicating with me.

So I was like, you know what, hun?

I'm going to say that you are an excellent father. I said, but me and you were like falling apart. We're like drifting apart.

And so I was going to come down here and stay with my sister in Atlanta. And she said, you come on, you bring the kids or whatever. But like I said, I had that dream.

This was all before everything. I came out with this secret and everything. I had that dream of my mother, let me know, don't go,

everything is going to be okay.

So.

And I'm a prayerful one. I pray and I trust God and I always just say, God, you bring me closer to my husband. Whatever has to be done,

you work this marriage out.

We're in a committed, you know, he had always told me that he's not going to leave, we're going to stay committed.

We're in this marriage for, you know, a lifetime.

So that was our commitment to each other. So we had said that and we did trust God. But Bobby did say that, you know, Cheryl, no, I'm not going to church this Sunday.

I'm not going to go or I feel hypocritical.

Speaker D: So I wasn't where I wanted to be at that time. Yes, I went to church and plus they had something going on in that church also.

Bobby Love: There was a fight going on, minister in the church and the people that was there in the church.

So they got that all worked out in the courts.

Okay.

Cheryl's father, he was one of the elders, elders in the church. He was one of the people that they started the church. He started the church with the other people that was the older people in the church,

you know. So I told Cheryl, I said, I don't want to get in that mess.

But as time would go on with Bishop Hobbs,

things were starting to smooth out. Starting to be smooth.

But I was still praying to God.

You know,

I was praying to God, and I was asking God for, you know,

help strengthen my.

My journey.

Speaker D: And she was sending me scriptures while I was in jail and stuff. Brought me a Bible.

So now I'm feeling good, but yet still I'm locked up.

And I was going to these hearings.

I didn't want to go to North Carolina.

I wanted to fight expedition.

So I had a lawyer. She's a very good lawyer.

And I guess for six months, you know,

I got arrested in January.

So in June, I told her,

may. No, I.

Bobby Love: It was May.

Speaker D: I told her that I wanted to go on back down to North Carolina and face the music there.

So they sent me down to North Carolina in June.

They told me in July that I was going to have a parole hearing.

And I'm so confident in God now.

I'm reading the Bible every day. I'm asking God to get me out of this mess,

you know. And by the way, there was some discussion for my sister about who did this,

because there was the FBI, when they was taking me to court that morning or taking me to jail that morning,

they said they got started getting calls from Charlotte, North Carolina,

telling them who I was.

They said they was not looking for me.

They had no idea who I was.

But once they kept getting these calls and getting these calls, that's when they start to come over,

sit outside,

watch me go to the grocery store, watch me go to the laundromat,

watch me do all these things,

you know.

And in 2014,

my brother passed.

This was my brother that was mute.

So he passed.

He had five children.

All of them are grown.

When I came to his funeral, they put me on the obituary as Bobby Love.

And I asked my niece, I said, why did you put me down there in Bobby Love? I thought she knew my name,

my real name. Walter Miller. Curtis Miller. That's what a lot of people used to call me.

She said, oh,

so your name is not Bobby Love? And I didn't talk to her no more after that.

Bobby Love: But I didn't think it was going to cause anything that it caused because we was, you know, right there in Greensboro.

And sure enough,

between her and her brother or somebody like that, they got that $2,000.

cheryl Love: $2,000?

Bobby Love: Yeah.

Speaker D: For.

Reginald D: Wow.

Bobby Love: Being captured. You know, they had it on Tick tock.

Speaker D: A lot of those.

Bobby Love: What is those Websites. And some of the children that I met.

Oh,

one of the Guys that I was dealing with, you know, hanging out with. And he was instrumental in helping me with the book.

His daughter,

she saw the story on TikTok and she said she kind of backed away from me.

Speaker D: And her thing was,

daddy Bobby was in jail.

You see him? Yeah.

And then this other little girl,

Corey's daughter,

she came over the house one day and she just kind of ran from me. Like she was afraid because she saw it on Tick Tock also the story and stuff like that.

Reginald D: Right.

Bobby Love: But this was when I was starting my journey.

So anyway, after this mess to me came clear in the church that Bishop was going to be there and a lot of other people started to come,

actually, the church kind of got,

I don't know, maybe 30, 40 people for a minute because we used to have anywhere from like 200 and more in the church on any given Sunday. The church would be packed.

We have to pull out chairs and stuff like that.

So Bishop told me, he said, I'm gonna make you a deacon.

Speaker D: I said, oh, okay.

Bobby Love: So when he told me he was gonna make me a deacon, we had the conflict in August of 2017.

Speaker D: And that gave me a.

Oh, man, it. It invigorated me, made me feel great that I'm. I'm gonna be a deacon and that's going to bring me closer to God on my journey.

cheryl Love: I've been praying all that time from the beginning. Been praying, lord,

make my husband come into church and be in the church with us and come as a. You know, we come together as a family and in the church. And he sure.

Reginald D: Did I tell you something about a praying woman to tell you that?

Bobby Love: Yes.

cheryl Love: And I had been praying from the time we got married. Yes.

Bobby Love: But going back to when I got arrested,

they told me I had a parole date in 2015,

in October.

So I didn't talk to that many guys anyway.

But they would see me reading the Bible, they would see me studying, write down. Sometimes I would just write scripts, you know, I would tell Cheryl about her.

So one of the guys said to me, he said, what was that about?

Because I went up to the desk when they told me that I had the parole hearing coming up in October.

So the guy said,

what's up with that?

I said, oh, I'm gonna be going home.

Speaker D: He said, what?

I said, yeah, I'm gonna be going home.

And that's why I started telling the guys, you know, I went to church every time church was open. We had church four times a week in the seven day period.

The Rock of Ages. They came into the church. And they was there for a whole week.

These are ministers, and I talked to them, I prayed with them, and I had a good feeling that I was going to be paroled.

And sure enough, two weeks before Thanksgiving, they called me over to the gym.

They had given me this counselor. And anyway, this counselor said to me, said, yeah, I just got word from Raleigh that you made parole.

I said, okay.

cheryl Love: Wow.

Bobby Love: Yes. And it took him a minute before I could get released. I didn't get released until January.

Matter of fact, it was January 6th. It was supposed to be the 5th, but they went and bought me a ticket. And the ticket that they bought me was not for a senior citizen.

I should have got a senior citizen ticket. So they had to go and exchange the ticket and take me to Durham for me to get on the bus to go back to New York.

Reginald D: What a story of redemption, man. I mean,

and I guess. Let's talk about this. I got one question for you, baba. I missed this one because this is the one. When I saw the documentary on own, I had this one question that stuck out with me.

I said,

why didn't you tell Cheryl the truth about you? Was it you was protecting yourself? Was you protecting her? Or was you protecting both of you?

Bobby Love: I couldn't tell her. Cheryl is so honest. She would have told me, or she would have maybe called the cops and told them who I was.

Speaker D: You know, I would have.

Bobby Love: Cheryl is. Cheryl found a wallet on the.

Speaker D: Not a wallet, but we was in.

Bobby Love: A grocery store, and we brought home some things that was not ours. Cheryl walked all the way back over.

Speaker D: To that store and took him back.

Bobby Love: You know,

we found some stuff on the street one time.

She walked down the block trying to find the person that dropped it.

She is brutally honest about everything.

And I know if I'd have told her,

she would have either turned me in or she would have made me. If we was going to continue to be married, she would have made me turn myself in.

Reginald D: So, Cheryl, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this, because I think this is real powerful.

cheryl Love: Who now? You, Bobby.

Reginald D: Yo, Cheryl. You.

cheryl Love: Yes.

Reginald D: So choosing to stay was not a weakness for you? That's not a weakness. I'm telling you, you're a strong woman. It was strength.

cheryl Love: Yes.

Reginald D: You know, how did Stan become an act of redemption for you as a woman with a wounded heart?

cheryl Love: I'mma tell you,

I had to think about that thing because I said for so many years,

I said he deceived me. I had to come to the realization of the truth right I had to say,

now, he deceived you all these many years, Cheryl.

What are you going to do?

So I had to really weigh it out. I had to weigh the good and the bad and ugly,

and I had to put it together.

And I had to say, listen,

but do you love him?

Is this who you want to be with? Do you want him to grow?

Do you still love him?

Do you still want to be involved with him?

This the father of your children?

He's your husband.

He's been here working all this time.

Yeah,

there was some things that, you know, not taking pictures. But you can throw all that away.

What is it that brings you together?

You know,

when he proposed to you, he gave you his last name, he loved you.

So now you're gonna be committed to him and we're gonna work this thing out.

We gonna put God first,

and we're gonna work out we're going to be our authentic self. Because now I know exactly who he is. I know what has gone down,

and we gonna move forward.

Speaker D: Cheryl has a Godmother, and she's what, 92. 92. Now, I met this lady,

her name is Catherine.

So when we was working in the hospital together,

we worked in the kitchen.

And I didn't know Katherine.

I never talked to her, seen her at anything.

But she called me upstairs one day.

Bobby Love: And she said, you're the one dating my goddaughter.

Speaker D: And I'm like, excuse me.

Bobby Love: So she kind of.

Speaker D: It was all in fun, but she kind of attacked me, and I was no where. I've heard. And once,

you know, all the stuff was out about me and everything like that,

Catherine talked to Cheryl and told Cheryl,

everybody got a story,

it might be good,

everybody got a pass, it might be good, it might be bad, whatever it is.

Bobby Love: But she told Cheryl all the things.

Speaker D: That me and her had accomplished in being married and the children,

stuff like that. And I think that had a lasting effect on Cheryl also,

you know, in her feelings and to stay and continue to be married and everything like that.

Reginald D: Yeah, I really believe. Because pretty sure by the. Where the story came out and the truth came out, if you weren't worth nothing should have been gone.

cheryl Love: Gone.

Reginald D: So let me ask you this. Let's go to the children.

So, Cheryl, how hard was it for you to share this with the children? When this happened, when it all came.

cheryl Love: About and, you know, believe it or not, they were stronger than me,

the kids, they were like. And one of my sons was joking around with the bottle, like, daddy, don't cry, dad. He said, Come on, man. We always knew you was a gangster anyway.

One was talking like that, and the other son said, will you shut up? Don't tell him that.

But they were stronger than me. And the thing is, I would always pray with the kids and pray with our children. So we would just gather together and just pray.

We pray right there in the J.

We prayed when we would go see him. We always prayed and just let him know we love you. We with you.

Everything's just gonna work out. It's gonna be okay. Because we wanted him to know that he was not by himself.

And I used to tell him, I said, bobby,

when you. And there, I said, act like it's a spa instead of a jail. Act like it's a spa? Yeah. I said. He probably said, will you be quiet, but just act like you in a gym or something.

You know, that kind of thing.

But always just tried to stay positive with him. And I said, God is so good. Because he would write me back. And Bobby wasn't writing things like this at first, but he was telling, I'm in the kingdom now, Cheryl, and speaking to those ministers.

And I said, God, somehow we think that he's not doing things the way we want him to do it, right? But the way he does it, my God. And he just turned everything around.

You hear me? He turned it all around for our good. Our family got closer. We started communicating more.

I'm just telling you, we serve an awesome God. And you. I know you know that.

Speaker D: I. I want to say this.

cheryl Love: Yeah.

Bobby Love: I had some dreams while I was in jail also.

And I dreamed that God was holding my feet. One time, I dreamed that God was holding my back up because I have back issues.

Speaker D: And where I used to have to.

Bobby Love: Walk from the dormitory where I was in,

it was like. It was a distance, you know, to go to the dining room and have breakfast and lunch and dinner. And once I got some money, I stopped going over there.

You know, I would just buy me something from the commissary.

But I had these dreams, and sure enough,

I was having trouble with my back. They did not give me my cane. I walk with a cane, but they wouldn't let me have my cane in there. And found myself praying and stuff like that and praying for my health and stuff.

And sure enough, I had this dream.

Speaker D: One night, and God was holding my back.

He was holding my feet. And he told me in both dreams, it was two different dreams.

You're gonna be all right.

Everything is gonna be all right.

And that was just more confidence that things Was gonna work out that I was gonna get out of here.

So God has been everything.

He's been everything, everything.

Reginald D: Because what he does see, and I'm asking both this and what I see in it,

you know, it was forgiveness on both sides.

God had forgiven Bobby, even though his past caught up with him. But he lived that upright life.

Good man, a good father,

a good husband in the church, you know, being a good citizen.

And when your parents caught up with you, you had to go back,

and then you had to face parole. And then it was like, hey, all right, you're good. You can let. You made parole, and you got out.

On the flip side of it,

Cheryl's forgiveness for what she went through and for the unknown and things like that,

you know, what do forgiveness look like in real time for both of you?

Was it one moment or gradual rebuilding?

Bobby Love: Well, never tore down the whole thing. Once I asked Cheryl this,

I said, are you going to divorce me? The second day I went to jail on Thursday, Friday,

okay? Finally, she came to see me that.

Speaker D: Saturday, and I asked her what she's going to do.

Bobby Love: And once she said that I'm not going nowhere, she said her thing at that time was my health.

I got a high blood pressure. I'm a type 2 diabetic. And she said that, I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about your health and hoping that you can withstand this.

Whatever's going to come.

That's what she gave me at that time.

Speaker D: And once she told me that, like I said, I was crying,

you know, the kids was coming over there, and I don't know, just boohoo, just boohooing, all of that. Stop. I stopped crying.

cheryl Love: For me, it was for forgiveness right then, because I was like, God,

I know that you are with me,

and I love Bobby. I love my husband.

And my thing was,

I didn't want him to feel like he was alone, Like I didn't care about him, because that was not the case at all.

And like I said, at that moment, I was not thinking about leaving. I was thinking about his mental. I was praying with him, let him be okay. I had cried, like, all day,

all day, all night, even when I went to work that day.

Speaker D: Yeah, that was something.

cheryl Love: But I, you know, I just went on ahead and did what I had to do. And like I said, God was with me. And I would have visions and things, too.

I would see Bobby because he would go to the grocery store and things like that, and I would just visit him. And one time I had seemed like I was dreaming, and I just saw him going right into the store.

And I said, God, you gonna get. Bobby's coming out of that jail. He is coming out of there. So I'm just gonna trust you. I'm just gonna have a song in my heart every day.

I'm gonna pray. And we just can pray together and trust in the Lord. And that's what we did,

you know,

And God brought us through. He brought us through.

Reginald D: Yeah. And let me say this.

Speaker D: Yes.

Reginald D: I think one of the biggest things, Cheryl, is that, you know, when people get in predicaments, I think you kind of.

cheryl Love: You.

Reginald D: You kind of stay rooted in God. And, you know, people get in predicaments and they start listening to all these other people.

cheryl Love: Yeah.

Reginald D: And a lot of people would have been like, if you'd have told them that story, they'd have like, I don't.

Speaker D: Know why you still with him.

Reginald D: And you going,

but you had a life where you knew the man you live with. You knew, you know, what man he is. And all of this stuff. You didn't know about all this other stuff, but you knew that you had all of these years of what foundation y' all built together and what kind of man it is,

and you didn't let anybody persuade you from that.

cheryl Love: No.

Reginald D: That's why you are the place you are right now. And the story is reaching. Like, I mean, it's all over the place.

cheryl Love: Yes. And. And then, let me tell you, there was people. Some people said say, come on, tell you. Didn't you mean to tell me you didn't know like this? You know, I'm like, really?

I did not know. I did not know. I wasn't looking for anything like that. I said, you know,

there was like. Like I said, there was some things,

like, I thought, like, the pictures and stuff, but so what? Some people don't like to take pictures. So I just let it go. Like I said, my husband worked hard.

He, you know, he loved his kids. He took care of us.

So I really wasn't looking for anything,

you know, because they said, you didn't know his name.

I said,

I really didn't know. So that made me feel. Sometimes like, gosh, you know, I felt kind of stupid. It's kind of silly. And then there was a time when somebody had said to me, when I said, hey, aren't you the one when the story had first come out,

that lady you Cheryl love? And I'm like, no, no,

no, that's not me.

Bobby Love: We,

you know, the book right here.

And I was Supposed to get a movie from this,

but that didn't happen.

But I'm hoping.

I'm hoping that we can get one as,

I don't know, maybe next year sometime or get some confrontations that we can get,

you know,

a movie done. Well, we did everything to get this done.

We talked to people that was interested in doing the movie,

and I think Covid came around. Yeah, Kobe came around and kind of knocked that.

Speaker D: Then they had this writer strike that was a pushback. Oh, we got pushed back from that. But I'm still hoping to.

I would like to, if it comes, that I can talk to somebody.

I've been told that you have a good book,

but to do a movie,

it's got to be stronger.

And I'm thinking that what I put in the book wasn't enough,

because when I was writing it,

the lady told me, she said, you know, if you're going to do 400, 500, people going to get tired of reading, man.

So she said about. About 300 and maybe 75, 80 pages would be enough.

So what we do is to do the highlights of your life. There was a lot of things I left out of here.

They were bad things. Yes. But it was a part of my life,

a part of what I did to get to where I got,

you know,

And I would really like to, at some point,

get back on this, talk to whoever's going write a screenplay and,

you know, produce and direct a movie of this book.

Reginald D: Right.

And I think it'll happen. I really do think it happened. I think some of them would take that and. And they could do miracles with this.

I'm telling you.

I'm telling you. So we'll definitely be praying for that. And if I find anybody I know, I would definitely connect with them in a thing like that.

cheryl Love: Thank you, Reginald.

Reginald D: Yeah. So here's the thing. I mean, this story is. I mean, you are two remarkable individuals. I've seen a lot of stories with couples and marriages and things like that, but this journey was nothing but God's hand in the middle of it.

That was just it. It just ordered the steps all the way. And I truly believe it don't matter how it went down or what the wrong was. If he made the wrong, he made it right.

Bobby Love: Yes. Amen. Amen.

cheryl Love: So.

Reginald D: And through it all.

cheryl Love: Yes.

Reginald D: You know, you let God use you. I mean, and chapters of your life has actually been birthed and people are listening, and it's been reaching all over the United States is on the own network and things like that.

Yeah, you Know,

how did you rebuild a stronger foundation? I thought everything was done.

cheryl Love: How do we build a strong foundation?

Reginald D: Your foundation seemed like it got stronger. Everything you went through, how did you rebuild that?

Bobby Love: Well, like I said, when we were living on Tilden in New York,

Brooklyn.

So after everything was kind of out there,

I was told about my son in law.

Talked to the guy that lived across the hall from us.

And he didn't know anything about me at that time.

Only thing, he would see me going in church, back and forth.

He said to me, he said, well, he said to my son in law.

Speaker D: He said, man, that guy got so many suits.

Bobby Love: But anyway, my son in law was saying, you know, the guy across the.

Speaker D: Hall, John, he want to take us.

Bobby Love: To dinner one night, maybe this week, Thursday.

Speaker D: I said, okay. I say, why? He said, well, I told him about your story.

I said, you did?

I said, why didn't you ask me before you tell him that?

So he's telling me that you want to take me to dinner. He knows some people.

Some people can help you write a book. Because he knew that I was writing my book myself.

I was just writing down stuff about myself. And I started writing back when we first got married. I know, Michelle. I had this book,

this notebook, and.

Bobby Love: Cheryl went through it and she couldn't understand it.

cheryl Love: What is this? Talking about living for the city and. Yeah, skyscrapers and all of that.

Speaker D: That's what Stevie wanted to say in the song.

Bobby Love: So sure enough, we went to dinner, me and John and Cheryl and my daughters. They didn't know what we was doing,

you know, we hadn't told them anything.

So John said, well,

you and I know this guy, you know,

he's a white guy. He take pictures around Central park.

And sometimes he asks people to tell a little story about a picture or something like that.

So he said he gonna be here in New York next week on another Thursday.

So sure enough, his name is Brandon. He's the one that has the Humans of New York website.

Speaker D: Okay.

cheryl Love: Books and everything.

Speaker D: Yeah, he's been doing. He's been helping a lot of people get their.

Whatever it is they're doing. He has some. Two guys to do some sneakers, you know, we went to a dinner with him and stuff like that.

And so he comes to my house,

the man takes off his shoes,

gets comfortable, and he start interviewing me.

And he's writing down key things. And once I told Cheryl, Cheryl said, what? What he gonna do? What? So we was hoping that it would turn out to be something,

but we just didn't know at that time.

So sure enough,

I was going to see my parole officer, sorry to say, but Kobe Bryant got killed.

So he said that Kobe Bryant was taking all the news.

So he said, let's wait to Kobe Bryant's death kind of settled down somewhat,

and he went to Jamaica.

He took his parents to Jamaica. They was over there for about three weeks,

almost four weeks.

So when he came back and saw me and stuff, he interviewed myself. He interviewed Cheryl also,

you know, wrote these paragraphs.

So now I'm going to see my parole officer on this particular day, and he's releasing those paragraphs.

And my parole officer said that about you.

And I'm like, huh?

I hadn't read it. I didn't know anything about it.

But evidently the interest was building, building, building, building,

you know, and that was the start of it. So next we got some calls. They wanted to do a movie. They wanted to write a book, you know, with all these people.

We got a book agent in New York,

Manhattan, and he was telling us how he can work on the west coast with his people,

and he would be over here on the east coast,

and we can put all this together, a book and a movement. And so it just made me and Cheryl. Oh, man,

happy. Great, you know, and just made everything even more,

you know, tight with us,

you know.

Reginald D: Right.

cheryl Love: Something more to look forward to.

Speaker D: Right.

Reginald D: And go ahead, Bob.

Bobby Love: I had on a green jacket. So I'm on the street one day. I used to take my grandson to his daycare.

So this guy stopped me and said, are you Bobby Love?

And I looked at him,

I said, yeah,

it was kind of. Kind of.

I don't know. It gave me a little bit of nervous kind of feeling when people would,

oh, Bobby Love, how you doing? I was in the store one day,

and I looked at her, and I'm like.

Looked around as if,

you know, I'm not Mama. Beloved.

cheryl Love: We had not become instant celebrities.

Bobby Love: Yeah.

cheryl Love: Like I said, somebody was asking me, and I was like, no, no, I'm not Cheryl Love. So it wasn't.

Bobby Love: I guess it was not knowing how to react at first with this,

you know, found celebrity. I went in a store over there on Flatbush Avenue, and the guy said.

Speaker D: I seen you somewhere.

Bobby Love: One of the guys that run the store, his father's store.

Speaker D: It used to be his father's store.

Bobby Love: Now he was running the store.

And he's a Chinese American.

He's Chinese and something else. So he said to me again, he said, I seen you somewhere.

And so I said to him, I said,

do you read Humors of New York. That's where I saw you. Yeah,

he reads the Humors of New York. He said, so, what you doing?

I said, what do you mean, what am I doing?

Speaker D: He said, what's up? What.

cheryl Love: What.

Bobby Love: What's going to happen?

I said, I don't know exactly right now, you know,

but he would tell me that. Yeah, I read that all the time, man. You know, your story, man. Oh, man, it was fabulous, man.

Speaker D: You know, you all right?

Bobby Love: You know, you.

Speaker D: Yeah.

cheryl Love: People would ask us. Yeah, yeah. So Bobby's out of jail now, and I'm. I said, said, the kids are okay. Everybody's. Yeah, yeah.

Bobby Love: I went to my doctor and the place that I used to see the doctors on Church Avenue.

And when I went in there, some of the people was aware of the book and the story and stuff. Not the book, but the story.

And she said to me, she said,

is the cops looking for you?

What?

She said, if the cops is looking.

Speaker D: For you, you stand over there, you know.

Bobby Love: Said, no, cops.

Speaker D: Not looking for me.

Bobby Love: You know. And I talked to my doctor. She was a lady, she was from Long Island. They used to give us like 20 minutes with your doctor at this clinic. She sat there and twice they told her, they said,

are you going to see such and such you're going to see? She said, I'm going to stay late. But she was in there listening to me tell her about myself and the.

Speaker D: Story and everything was in New York.

cheryl Love: And the good thing about it, too, Reginald, is that, you know, people, when they come and ask us to see story and say, this is true, this really happened to you guys, and we're able to put it out there that, you know, what God did for us and that whatever he did for us,

he can do for you, too.

If there's nothing that you can't do, there's nothing that God won't do for you if you ask him and he can turn things around, I don't care how bad things look or whatever, and that you can be your true self, your authentic self,

you know, and be truthful with each other and just live your life, move forward and enjoy life.

Reginald D: Let me ask you this.

cheryl Love: Yes.

Reginald D: Let me ask you this before we go, okay, to the both of you.

What would you say to a married couple,

you know,

that may be going through struggles and things like that in life,

you know, how do you persevere? How did you get through it? You know, life is going to keep life in. That's what I call it, going to. It's going to keep Lifing.

What would you say to a couple that's going through some hard times or going through some things like that, but they really, really, really true. Truly love each other,

but, you know, life just hits.

cheryl Love: Yes. Yes.

Reginald D: What would you say?

Bobby Love: Sit down and talk. Start by sitting down and talk.

cheryl Love: You have to read.

Bobby Love: You gotta. Okay, what's the source of all the discomfort or whatever's going on?

Is he messing around or she messing around?

Sit down and talk.

Let it start from there,

you know.

cheryl Love: Put on your favorite songs.

Start touching,

touching again.

You know,

somebody got to make the first move.

Somebody has to say, okay,

I'm going to make the first move. I'm going to start. I'm going to come and rub his neck. Going to come and give him a kiss. I'm gonna jump on his back.

Whatever. Gotta be done, you know,

but have fun. Throw a ball at them.

Get something going. Throw a ball at them. Something right. Pray together.

Speaker D: What was the way. How did y' all get started? Or whoever they was? How did they get started?

Think back to those days when it was a good time.

cheryl Love: That's right. You know,

and then there's gonna be days when you don't feel like rubbing and being together and.

Honey, you know what? I'm gonna go in the other room.

I'm gonna go in the other room tonight. But I'll see you tomorrow. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Okay.

Get your favorite candy, something.

Give him. What's my candy? I like.

Yes, Worth it. Give him up.

Tell a corny joke.

Bobby Love: Everything. Hasn't always been no hunky dory with us.

cheryl Love: Oh, no.

Bobby Love: You know, we've had some bad times. Like, she said she was contemplating divorce at one time.

cheryl Love: You know, separation or separation. Yes.

Speaker D: You know, but sit down and talk.

Bobby Love: And you gotta, first of all, love yourself. Be honest with yourself, you know, on both sides.

cheryl Love: You know, you gotta talk. You cannot not discuss stuff. You have to talk. You have to talk, you know?

Reginald D: Right.

cheryl Love: Even if one don't want it, just say, well, we're gonna get back to it. And that's what we do. Now,

before somebody just be. Well, just like, I can't talk about it. No, you're going to come back and talk about it,

you know. Right,

right.

Reginald D: So lastly, how can the listeners purchase the book?

Speaker D: Oh.

Bobby Love: It'S still at. I think Amazon said they had three.

cheryl Love: Amazon, Amazon.

Bobby Love: Raise it up. Raise it up.

Reginald D: Okay, there you go.

cheryl Love: Yes. Barnes and Nobles, all the bookstores will have said.

Speaker D: You can order it straight from. Her name is Rikira Clark.

Bobby Love: She Says she got plenty of books. That's why we haven't been getting any residuals. You know, it's been five years since.

Speaker D: We did this book.

Bobby Love: But anyway, she says she still has plenty of books.

Speaker D: Read what it is, Amir, the publisher in the back. I think it's right there in the books.

cheryl Love: Oh, Mariner Books, right?

Speaker D: Yeah.

Bobby Love: It says Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishing.

cheryl Love: Marinerbooks.com Mariner Books.com in any bookstore, you know you can get the Redemption of Bobby Low.

Bobby Love: Yes, Reggie. I went to school with famous basketball player, and he lives in Florida.

Speaker D: So when he went to Barnes and.

Bobby Love: Nobles, he was buying something else in Barnes and Nobles. He saw the book, he started jumping.

Speaker D: Around saying, I know that guy.

Bobby Love: I know that guy, went to school with that guy.

And a friend of his that lives here in New York,

he called me and said he wanted to talk to me.

So, sure enough, I called him, talking about Bob McAdoo, I'm sure.

Reginald D: Oh, man. Yeah, I know Bob McAdoon.

Bobby Love: Yeah, we went to school at Gillespie together.

Reginald D: Okay.

Bobby Love: Yeah, we played basketball together on the basketball team. He went on to fortune and fame.

I went where I went, but he's now in Florida,

and he just relaxes and stuff like that. Matter of fact, a few months ago, they dedicated this park where we used to play in Greensboro.

It used to be Bimbo Park.

Speaker D: Now it's called McAdoo Park. Him.

Bobby Love: They gave him the key to the city and everything. My sister told me about it.

Speaker D: Yeah.

cheryl Love: Wow.

Bobby Love: Yeah.

cheryl Love: Wow. Yeah.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Reginald D: So Cheryl and Bobby has been a blast. Thank you so much for stopping by, being on the show. I really enjoyed it, y'.

cheryl Love: All.

Reginald D: Life is amazing.

Speaker D: Oh, thank you.

cheryl Love: Thank you, Reggie. Thank you, Reggie.   said  said, Reggie, like, you can do it.

Reginald D: That's what most people say when I go out that door. That's what they say, Reggie.

cheryl Love: That's because, like, you make us feel so comfortable. So, Reginald.

Reginald D: Oh, yeah, we family. You call me Reggie. We good.

cheryl Love: Thank you.

Reginald D: All right.

cheryl Love: Thank you.

Reginald D: Thank you so much. Cheryl and Bobby Love. Thank you.

cheryl Love: Thank you. Also, yes, we didn't get to meet her.

Reginald D: Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Thank you for listening to Real Talk With Reginald D. If you enjoyed listening to Real Talk with Reginald D, please rate and review on Apple Podcast. Podcast. See you next time.

Speaker D: All right, thank you.

cheryl Love: Take care.

Speaker D: Blessed night.