Joke Silva, a Nollywood legend, has been married to veteran Nollywood actor, Olu Jacob for over two decades. The successful Nollywood thespian has several awards and accolades from within and outside Africa. We recently caught up with the mother of two, who recently lost her aged mother. She shared in her views on why young entertainers and celebrities’ marriages crash.
“I think a lot of our people don’t have this sense of commitment in their relationships and marriages, and I think a lot of friends and family have influence in that area. You need to encourage them to work out whatever issues that arise between them because there will be challenges, don’t forget that they are two different people coming from two different backgrounds, the families, friends and relations should encourage them to stay together. However, if its a relationship in which you discover strange things, like the person is on drugs or the person is violent, hey! I won’t advice the person to stay, you just need space, let the person get some counselling and then maybe the marriage can work, if not, let the couple go their separate ways,” she said.
On what has kept her marriage to Olu Jacobs going and that special thing she misses about her late mother, she said, “It’s been God, you can’t remove the grace of God from the kind of marriage that we have. It’s not as if we have not had challenges in our marriage like other people, we’ve just been very blessed. God’s grace has been helping us. We don’t let the sun go down on our anger, we discuss whatever we feel won’t help us.
“As for my late mum, believe me, I miss a lot about her but one special thing I will miss about Dr. Marienne Abimbola Silva is being able to just go down to her house and talk to her about so many things. There are so many things I would have loved to discuss with her in these past couple of weeks she has passed away, but hey! She is gone and so I miss her.”
Asked if any of her two children is into entertainment and how well are they supporting them, she said, “Our eldest son is into entertainment, but he is into movie production. We are giving him the best of our support. We wish him to go higher and higher.”
Joke Silva Jacob, who has starred in several films and television series in both English and Yoruba languages, is not just an actress. She is a director, born in Lagos, Nigeria into a family of four children. She attended Holy Child College in Lagos, after which she studied English at the University of Lagos. She then relocated to England and studied drama at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London.