Ramahn Terik Herbert has lots of nicknames. To friends and colleagues, he’s Jersey. Before Chanel Rae Pettaway called him Groomzilla in the run-up to their Aug. 21 wedding, he was Mr. Probation. Herbert hasn’t let it affect his sense of identity.
“I consider myself a curator,” he said, “a music man.” He wouldn’t have met Pettaway if he wasn’t.
Their relationship dates back to 2010, when Pettaway was searching for a rap star to boost the profile of Baiyu, an R&B singer and her client at the Legion Media Group, which she helped found. Herbert was then an executive at Streamline Records/Interscope. “I tracked Ramahn down” on Twitter, Pettaway said, hoping to secure a guest vocal.
Neither was single at the time. Herbert, who lived in Union, N.J., was still involved with the mother of his two daughters, 24 and 26, and son, 20. Pettaway, who lived in the Bronx, was in a committed relationship with a man she would marry in 2015 and divorce in 2023; they share an 11-year-old son.
But Herbert struck Pettaway as someone she should stay in touch with. Not only had he secured a vocal by the Bronx rapper Fred the Godson for the Baiyu collaboration, he also impressed her as someone she could turn to for music business advice. For nine years, they kept a cordial connection through listening parties and social media.
A first kiss at Herbert’s music studio came as a surprise to both.
Pettaway, 42, grew up in Central Islip, N.Y., with two younger sisters. Her parents, Reburn and Josephine McFadzean, are originally from Belize. At Pace University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science, she was entertainment editor at the college newspaper. That led to internships at record labels and radio stations, which steered her into music publicity, now the core of her business.
Herbert, 48, is from Newark, N.J., and has three older brothers. As a teen, he moved with his parents, Robert and Priscilla Herbert, to Rocky Mount, N.C. His music industry training started there when a member of his church recruited him to be a D.J. At Howard University, he picked up the nickname Jersey. He studied communications but quit a year before graduation to intern at Bad Boy Entertainment. He started working at record labels in artist and repertoire divisions soon after and is now a partner at Power Moves, an entertainment company.
Herbert was responding to a March 2019 text from Pettaway, who was killing time in Manhattan, when he invited her to hang out in Weehawken, N.J.
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“I was like, I’m just in the studio, chilling,” he said. “Why don’t you come by?” Both had broken up with their partners. When Herbert leaned in for a kiss, “I was taken aback,” said Pettaway, who hadn’t thought of him romantically until then. “But then I asked myself, ‘Why not?’”
More kissing ensued a week later on their first date at Sammy’s Fish Box, a seafood restaurant on City Island in the Bronx. “I was at ease around him, and my intuition picked up on that,” Pettaway said. Still, she had reservations about jumping into a new relationship. “I definitely played the Steve Harvey 90-day rule,” a formula the comedian developed to encourage women to get to know a man before getting intimate. “We called it our probationary period, and I started calling him Mr. Probation.”
By the time Herbert successfully completed probation, each was braided into the life of the other — so much so that Pettaway’s son, Chase, sometimes fought tears when Herbert left their place to go home. “He’d be like, ‘I want to go to Jersey’s house!’” Pettaway said. The goodbyes got easier in January 2021, when the couple and their sons moved into a gated community in Secaucus, N.J., where they still live.
On Dec. 20, 2025, Pettaway and Herbert were hosting “Cousin Christmas,” a tradition where both families gather for a gift exchange, when Herbert proposed. Pettaway was ready. “I was like, ‘Let’s do it!’” she said.
Soon after, Herbert began turning his curation skills toward their Aug. 21 wedding at Liberty House, a Jersey City venue with views of the Statue of Liberty.
“I’ve never met a man more detailed about napkins,” Pettaway said — cause for her to issue an affectionate new nickname, Groomzilla. But from his point of view, “the details matter,” he said.
The ceremony attended by 220 guests and officiated by Ivy Scudder, senior pastor at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Westwood, N.J., blended Black and Belizean traditions, including the jumping of a broom and soca music. Pettaway, who was raised Catholic, walked down the aisle with her father to “Ave Maria.” A remembrance of her mother, who died of liver disease on July 26, brought a somber moment to an otherwise spirited celebration.
“It was amazing seeing all my details come to life, down to the monograms on the napkins in the bathroom,” Herbert said. To Pettaway, he was Groomzilla no more.
The wedding, she said, “was everything I dreamed of.”
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