She was once one-half of Kenya’s most beloved media “power couples,” but Marya Prude has revealed that the final death knell of her marriage to TV host Willis Raburu came not in a courtroom, but on a smartphone screen.
In a raw and revealing interview on the Iko Nini podcast aired on Friday, January 9, 2026, Marya opened up about the “shocking” moment her marriage officially collapsed.
Despite the couple already being separated and attempting to save the relationship through therapy, Marya confessed she was blind-sided when the formal end arrived via a messaging app.
“I was served divorce papers when I was thinking we were working on it,” she told the hosts.
“Nilitumiwa kwa WhatsApp (I was sent them on WhatsApp). We were separated at that time, but it still caught me off guard.”
While many would expect a formal process involving lawyers and face-to-face meetings, Marya described a cold, digital conclusion to their high-profile romance. Upon receiving the PDF documents on her phone, she admits she underwent an immediate shift in attitude.
“Kupata hizo documents nikasema it is okay… I didn’t say ‘oh, let’s get parents or pastors,’ I was just done,” she recalled.
In a surprising twist, Marya claimed that even Willis appeared hesitant about the finality of the move.
“Later when we talked, I told him I thought the story had reached a point of irreconcilable differences, but even he hadn’t fully reached that conclusion by the time he sent the papers,” she added.
The divorce was far from the amicable split often portrayed by celebrities. Marya revealed that she refused to simply sign the papers Willis provided, instead filing her own separate case as the petitioner.
“I did not agree with his grounds for divorce; I had my own grounds,” she explained, emphasizing that the “importance of the grounds” led to a legal stalemate.
Despite having no disputes over property or children, the “messy” process dragged on for over a year.
The timing of the split—at the height of the pandemic—only added to the emotional toll. Marya recalled how a bored, locked-down public “went in” to find entertainment in her personal tragedy, which occurred shortly after the couple suffered the heartbreaking loss of their child.
“It was so messy that even when I went out, people would stare at me… ‘ooh, kaliachwa’ (she’s been dumped),” she said.
Even her parents were targeted by gossip-mongers, leaving her feeling “bad” for dragging her family into the media circus.
As she looks toward the future in 2026, Marya has made one firm resolution: she will never date a public figure again. While she clarified that Willis’s fame wasn’t the cause of their marital issues, it was the primary reason their private pain became public property.
“I will never date a public figure,” she stated firmly. “His fame was never an issue during the marriage, he was very transparent—but the scrutiny of the divorce was overwhelming.”
