The Truth About Maxine Waters' Husband

While Maxine Waters has certainly earned herself the endearing nickname of "Auntie Maxine" for the way she unabashedly criticized the Trump administration, she's also aware of the impact she's made on the millennial generation. During an interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC, the Congresswoman admitted she was proud of the connection she's made the generation that has made her steely-tough persona a meme. "They do call me Auntie Maxine — I embrace that, I love that and I'm going to be their auntie," she said, via BuzzFeed, adding, "I'm going to keep telling the truth and I want them to get out there and register people to vote, get active, and bombard the Congress of the United States leadership with what they want them to do."

And while Waters is certainly one politician who doesn't mind serving face and spilling tea when she needs to, not much is really known about her personal life, along with her marriage to her husband, Sid Williams, who has also faced controversy in the past. Here's what you need to know.

Maxine Waters married her husband Sid Williams in 1977 and while they've mostly kept their marriage under the radar, there was a time in which Waters made the wrong kind of headlines herself. According to The Sun, Williams, a former professional football player, was made the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas in 1994 — which a lot of critics believed only happened because of his wife's position and supposed connections in the State Department, per the Los Angeles Times. One critic event went as far as to sarcastically suggest that Williams' justification for being the ambassador of the Caribbean island nation is because he once visited while on vacation.

Nevertheless, Waters wrote a letter to the State Department, making it clear that her husband had her support for the job. She wrote at the time (per the L.A. Times), "Sidney's public relations and diplomatic skills have been well honed over the years. Sidney Williams, who is my spouse, was a professional football player for the Cleveland Browns and Washington Redskins."

Williams ended up serving as the ambassador to the Bahamas during the Clinton administration. But that wasn't the only time Williams managed to poke and prod his way in Washington, D.C.

According to Politico, Sid Williams was spotted several times around the vicinity of the House floor. Even though he is a congressional spouse, that doesn't give him the privilege to be there, in the cloakrooms, or in the speaker's lobby, as detailed by the site. And while it seemed like Williams might have just been looking for a bathroom at the time and had not intentionally wandered into the lobby, he did have some explaining to do back in 2012, when his wife was accused of allegedly seeking government assistance from OneUnited Bank, where Williams held a directorial position, according to CNN. Waters was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing.

These days Williams is out of the spotlight, but Waters is still very much a millennial figure, and, some would even say, a fighter. During an interview with Megan Thee Stallion for Harper's Bazaar, Waters made it clear that her only interest these days is building up her community and serving those who elected her to do her job. She said, "When people need you, you come to their aid and it's not all always about money. I'm talking about just having the ability to have someone listen to you, that's hearing what you're saying, or you are sharing a moment that you experienced, that you want someone else to know about. That's how you build community. You respect people, you take them where they are, and you come to their aid when they need you."