For the first time since R. Kelly and Aaliyah's 1994 wedding, the minister who officiated the ceremony has spoken out as he testified this week under subpoena at Kelly's criminal trial.
The 54-year-old musician is facing several charges of racketeering, sexual exploitation of a child, forced labor, kidnapping, enticement, and bribery.
Kelly - full name Robert Sylvester Kelly - is also accused of being the ringleader of a two-decade-long scheme where he recruited women and underage girls for sex. He denies all allegations against him.
If he is convicted on all counts he could be sentenced to several decades in prison.
Aaliyah tragically died aged 22 in a plane crash in 2001. Her debut album, Age Ain't Nothing But a Number, was produced and written by R Kelly.
On the day after the 27th anniversary of their wedding, Nathan Edmond, 73, a Chicago-area ordained minister, testified that he officiated for Kelly and Aaliyah, whose full name was Aaliyah Dana Haughton, per Rolling Stone.
Kelly's marriage to the late singer Aaliyah is the backbone of the trial as prosecutors allege a member of Kelly's enterprise bribed a local official to create a fake ID so the marriage could take place.
Prosecutors say Aaliyah was 15 when she wed then-27-year-old Kelly. The marriage was annulled after her parents found out about it.
R. Kelly's former tour manager testified in court, saying that he bribed a government official to get Aaliyah a fake ID card so R. Kelly could secretly marry her.
Edmond testified he had never met the pair until the day of their wedding, and that he'd been asked by a friend he shared with Kelly to officiate the wedding as a favor.
"I didn't think it was anybody special. I didn't understand it at all," Edmond testified.
He testified that he married the couple at a hotel in Rosemont, Illinois, in the Chicago area.
"The door opened to the bedroom and out stepped Aaliyah and Mr. Kelly," Edmond testified.
He said the couple wore matching jogging suits for the ceremony, which lasted less than 10 minutes.
"They both had one leg on the jogging suit up to the knee," Edmond testified. "You couldn't see her whole face because her hair was over half of her face."
Last month, the singer's former tour manager Demetrius Smith testified that he paid $500 for an ID used by Kelly, then 27, to wed singer Aaliyah, who was underage, per BBC.
Smith was giving evidence after he was granted immunity from prosecution.
He told a jury at Kelly's sex-trafficking trial that he went into a welfare office in Chicago in 1994 and asked an employee who was taking ID photos if they "want to make some money".
He said he was confident the bribe would work because "everybody needs some money", he added.
The welfare card was one of two fake IDs used to allow the R&B artist to marry the teen after he began a sexual relationship with her and believed she was pregnant, per Sky News.
A marriage license listed Aaliyah as 18, while Kelly was 27 at the time.
According to prosecutors, the marriage - which was later annulled by Aaliyah's parents - was used by Kelly to protect himself from criminal charges relating to having sex with a minor and prevent the singer from testifying against him.