In 1991, Wanda Sykes married music producer Dave Hall. Interviewed by The New York Times Magazine, Sykes characterized their union as "a bad relationship," adding, "I wanted to get away." Their marriage ended in 1998.
"I chose to be straight," Sykes told Oprah Winfrey in 2013. "Totally repressed it." She came out publicly as gay in 2008 at a rally in support of same-sex marriage. As she told The Advocate, she'd known she was gay since childhood, but "actually made the choice to be straight as a kid" when she realized being a lesbian "wasn't gonna fly" in her conservative, religious family. Her divorce, she insisted, wasn't brought about by her sexuality, but as a byproduct of it. "It's just that when you bury a part of yourself, you can take those relationships only so far because you can't be totally open," she explained.
When she came out, Sykes also revealed that she was married to a woman, Alex Niedbalski, who is French. In an essay for InStyle, Sykes admitted that she and her spouse are "very different, but I think we complement each other in all the best ways. For example, she likes to travel, and I have money. I'm probably going to get into trouble for that one."
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