Kelly Rowland and Her Father Reunite after 30 Years

“There was always a piece of me that was kind of missing,” says Kelly Rowland about her father.

For 30 years, the singer, performer, and guest television host’s father, Christopher Lovett, was absent from her life. Bolstered by a loving mother, Rowland grew to be a famous performer, traveling the world and building a name for herself. But through it all, dad was never there.

“I was angry at him. I was disappointed in him. I had all those feelings of abandonment,” Rowland tells TODAY with Hoda and Jenna.

Rowland admits that she didn’t want a relationship with her father for many years. But something shifted in her a few years ago after giving birth to her son, Titan, and losing her mother shortly after. Fraught with urgent feelings, Rowland did something she never thought she would do: She reached out to her father.

“I said, I really need to know him,” Rowland remembers. “At that time I think I had still these feelings of like, Oh my god I have no parents,” she says, “But I was like, no… you do! You have one left.”

The next thing she knew, she was at a hotel in Atlanta going to meet her father. They talked for almost two hours, with Rowland listening intently to her father’s journey. To her surprise, he offered her answers to so many of her three-year-long questions.

“So some of the pages of this book of us were filling in,” Rowland says with tear-filled eyes. “It was incredible.”

The beauty of this is in Rowland’s journey in seeing that her father is not perfect. She listened generously and opened her heart. And she also allowed new space within her for her father.

“As parents, we have to give our parents grace. It’s never too late.”

To learn more about Rowland’s amazing story, and to hear from and see her father, watch the TODAY segment here.