The Women Build Family
Read below to learn more about the Wilkins and Smith-Wilson family. We will be building with Jamal and Aqueelah and their 6 daughters in Clover, SC, for this year’s Women Build.
My wife and I have an incredible love story that began in 1999 at Weequahic High School, where we developed a mutual crush but never acted on it. In 2008, after graduating from Johnson C. Smith University and moving back to Newark, NJ, we reconnected. Our first date felt magical, like a fairy tale, and my wife embraced my two children at the time, Ziyany (19) and Isaiah (age 18), as her own.
Though our relationship had a strong start, it ended after two years, and we spent seven years apart before reuniting. By this time, I still only have Ziyany and Isaiah, and my wife had Ah’Zarra (age 13). We officially became a couple in 2016 and welcomed our first daughter together, Jamirah (7), in 2017. I proposed in June 2018, and we set our wedding date for June 27, 2020.
In April 2019, we were expecting our second child together, Jamie (5), which was named after my father who had passed away in June 2019. Tragically, the following April brought more heartbreak as I lost 14 loved ones, including my grandfather, stepfather, aunt, and uncle, over a span of 14 days. This series of losses led us to postpone our wedding.
In 2022, we finally married and later welcomed our third daughter, Amoura. Remarkably, each stage of our relationship has been marked by the birth of a child: Jamirah after we reunited, Jamie after our engagement, and Amoura after our marriage. In 2025, we welcomed our daughter Amoura (6 months).
Through challenges and blessings, our faith in God and commitment to one another have grown stronger. We’ve learned that the ups and downs of marriage mold us to follow God’s will, and we are grateful for the journey and the blessings it has brought.
