follow her heart and go with her gut feeling about who she should be with. Although she loved Otis deeply, her heart was with someone else, and that someone else was the man she eventually was married to for 34 years, Armstead Edwards (he and Patti are now divorced).

Patti and Edwards were actually really good platonic friends for years, and it wasn’t until Otis popped the question to Patti that Edwards and Patti realized they were more than just good friends. Patti and Edwards once explained this in an interview with Ebony magazine and here’s how they explained it:

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Though it isn’t public knowledge, Patti came within a razors edge of marrying someone else [Otis Williams] before fate intervened to unite her and Armstead Edwards. Though she had known him all of her teen-age years (“We went to the same high school, but I liked her sister,” says Edwards) their relationship remained purely platonic. That is until Patti announced her engagement to another man and both she and Edwards realized how much they meant to one another.

Edwards said, “It all started on my 21st birthday,” recalling his first real “date” with Patti many decades ago. “The girl I was taking out stood me up and I had made such a big deal about going out on my 21st birthday that I didn’t want to just go back home. I knew Patti’s family very well and knew there was always someone home at her house, so I decided to go there instead. Pat was singing with the Bluebells at the time but happened to be home from a tour. So I asked her

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