Devale Ellis Shares the Key to His 22-Year-Long Relationship with Wife Khadeen

Devale Ellis says keeping the romance alive is easy when you’re still head over heels for each other.

While chatting with PEOPLE about his new Netflix holiday rom-com, Meet Me Next Christmas, Devale admits that he and his wife Khadeen Ellis “have a healthy addiction to each other.”

“I am unapologetic that I need my wife. I am not one of the people out here talking about, ‘I could do it all on my own,’ ” he says.

Khadeen is there to keep Devale grounded even when his work as an actor takes him away.

“There’s not a day that goes by where we don’t talk to each other, and there’s not a day that goes by where we don’t FaceTime,” Devale says. “ We have to see and speak and talk about the day. We need that.”

Devale, 40, and Khadeen, also 40, first met while attending Hofstra University in New York. They have been together for 22 years and officially tied the knot in 2010, shortly after his NFL career ended and Devale began to focus more on acting. Together, they have four children: Jackson, 13; Kairo, 8; Kaz, 7; and Dakota, 3. 

“I would have to say the key to longevity for us is: want to. There’s no secret sauce. I want to be married. I want to be monogamous. I want to be with Khadeen. That’s my person, and Khadeen wants to be with me,” Devale says.

“There’s nothing that we can’t discuss and get through. It’s just that simple,” he adds. “You wake up in the morning and you decide to be a better person, of course for yourself, but also to be of service to them. If you are a person who loves to be of service, being in a relationship is easy because you wake up with a job every day.”

Devale and Khadeen’s shared life is well documented on their YouTube channel, The Ellises, and their podcast, Dead Ass.  But they are careful only to share a glimpse of their family. 

“I do that on purpose because I want to share my family, I want to share love,” Devale says. “But I also want to keep things sacred.”

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He adds to PEOPLE: “My wife and I sit down and we decide before we post everything, what’s on-limits and what’s off-limits. As long as she and I can executive produce what our life is going to look like on the internet, we’re going to have fun doing it. Because we just want to show people what a Black family looks like in a different light.”

Meet Me Next Christmas is available now on Netflix.