What will be your reaction if upon seeing someone you think you so dearly love as a man and ready to settle with her but your mother says no find someone else?
That was what happened exactly to Nii Odartey Lamptey some 28 years ago at the peak of his footballing career when he met Gloria Appiah, a beautiful lady at his team training ground in Europe.
Like many fans, the beautiful Gloria Appiah had come to watch the team’s training session when by some coincidence the two met— Odartey Lamptey fell in love!
The two were seeing each other frequently after that meeting and Gloria became pregnant.
The year was 1994 early January and by 28th May 1994, the two were married in a plush ceremony in Accra despite Odartey Lamptey’s mother’s continuous warning and opposition against the wedding.
Odartey Lamptey decided to marry Gloria before the pregnancy became obvious but already his mother had been against his association with Gloria Appiah right from the day he introduced her to the family. This is a fact Odartey Lamptey revealed in a past interview himself.
With the pregnancy, which years later turned out not to be his, Odartey Lamptey said he didn’t want to have a first child outside wedlock and despite all the resistance and advice from his mother not to marry her, he went on to wed Gloria Appiah.
His mother was against the marriage because of the circumstances he met Gloria, how quickly she became pregnant and “her own intuition as a mother who carried Nii for more than 9 months”, a family source disclosed in an interview.
During his career as a professional footballer, he played as a striker from 1990 until 2008 notably for Anderlecht, Aston Villa, PSV Eindhoven, Coventry City and the Ghana Black Stars with Gloria beside him for the best part of at least 15 years until the day DNA test exposed all three kids they had are not his.
The three kids, Latifah, Kadijah and Moesha Odartey Lamptey (now all adults) were revealed not to be his children.
Recalling how his mother warned him over and over again about the lady he was dating, Odartey Lamptey said he regrets not listening to his mother.
After having 3 children behind Odartey Lamptey and letting him take care of these kids without knowing he was not the father, the family was very shocked to hear the same Gloria had taken the case to court to get 50% of everything their son owned following their divorce.
