R. Kelly fan posted singer’s $100K bond after meeting him on cruise, friend says

A close friend of R. Kelly’s said Tuesday the woman who posted bond for the singer met him on a cruise five months ago.
Don Russell, a Kelly friend and adviser, said within a few months of meeting the R&B singer, Valencia Love posted $100,000 to help Kelly win his freedom from Cook County Jail after he spent three nights in custody.
Love was a fan of Kelly’s music when she met the 52-year-old singer on a cold fall night aboard a Spirit of Chicago cruise on Lake Michigan in September, Russell said. Over the weekend, she called members of Kelly’s inner-circle and told them she wanted to help when she saw he wasn’t able to make bail.
“She wanted Rob to have a chance at justice, and she thought he’d have a better chance outside of jail than inside,” Russell said.

But a woman who called the Sun-Times and identified herself as Love disputed aspects of Russell’s account in a brief interview. She declined to say how she met the singer but acknowledged paying the bond.
On court paperwork, Love describes herself as a “friend” of Kelly’s as she shelled out $25,000 for each of the four cases — all with a different alleged victim — in which Kelly is accused of aggravated sexual abuse.
Although she put down six figures to get Kelly out of jail, Love’s own finances have been rocky, court records show.
But in 2017, she and her former husband came into a windfall. Each got about $1.1 million in a legal settlement from a wrongful-death lawsuit they filed against the former Children’s Medical Hospital in Chicago, court records show. Their daughter had died in 2010 during a heart procedure at the hospital, according to the records.
Love, 47, of southwest suburban Romeoville, is a corporate officer of the day care where she was a teacher, according to the Illinois Secretary of State’s office. She also is listed in secretary of state records as a manager of a restaurant, Love on the Blu, in south suburban Blue Island.