Gary Owen is speaking openly about one of the most painful chapters of his first marriage — and making a confident prediction about his second.

The comedian, 52, acknowledged in a new interview that he cheated on his ex-wife, Kenya Duke, during their marriage. But Owen says he does not expect infidelity to become part of his current marriage to Brianna Johnson.

His explanation is unusually direct.

According to Owen, the biggest difference is intimacy.

During an interview with VladTV published Aug. 22, Owen said he expects to be “100% faithful” to Johnson and contrasted their relationship with the final years of his marriage to Duke.

“The biggest difference between this marriage and my last marriage is that we weren’t intimate at all,” Owen said, claiming that he and Duke had sex only three times during the final six years of their marriage.

Owen emphasized that he was not trying to attack his ex-wife. Instead, he said the lack of intimacy reflected a relationship in which both people had stopped connecting romantically.

But his comments have reopened discussion about a marriage, divorce and family estrangement that have played out publicly for years.

Owen Says He and Duke Had Become More Like Roommates

Owen and Duke married in 2003 and remained together for nearly two decades before divorcing in 2021.

They share two children, Austin and Kennedy. Duke also has a son, Emilio, from a previous relationship.

Looking back now, Owen says the marriage had lost an important part of its connection long before it officially ended.

He told VladTV that even before the final years, he and Duke had not been “in sync in the bedroom.”

At one point, he described spouses who no longer sleep together as essentially becoming roommates.

Still, Owen insisted his remarks should not be interpreted as an attempt to blame Duke.

“The feeling was mutual,” he said, explaining that he believes neither of them was particularly interested in the other by that stage of the relationship.

That distinction appears important to Owen’s explanation.

He is not denying that he was unfaithful.

Instead, he is describing the conditions inside the marriage that, in his view, were very different from the relationship he has now.

He Says His Marriage to Brianna Johnson Feels Completely Different

Owen married Johnson earlier in 2026.

The couple had already welcomed twin sons, Royal and Rome, in July 2023.

Owen says communication about intimacy has become a major part of their relationship.

In the interview, he described a dynamic in which the couple openly discusses when one partner is tired or not in the mood rather than allowing rejection or frustration to build without explanation.

For Owen, that communication appears to represent one of the clearest contrasts between his two marriages.

He said he looks forward to going home and being with Johnson and suggested that the couple’s ongoing physical connection gives him confidence that he will remain faithful.

His broader point was that intimacy is not simply about sex itself.

It is also about feeling wanted, maintaining communication and understanding when the other person needs space.

Owen’s comments are likely to generate debate because they connect faithfulness so directly to the state of a couple’s physical relationship.

But he framed the issue as a lesson from his own experience rather than a universal formula for marriage.

His Divorce From Duke Became Extremely Public

Owen and Duke’s breakup was not a quiet one.

After nearly 18 years of marriage, Duke filed for divorce in 2021.

The split quickly became public, with accusations and disagreements spilling onto social media and into interviews.

The fallout also affected Owen’s relationship with his older children.

In 2024, Owen said he had gone more than three years without seeing them.

During an appearance on Club Shay Shay, he described that estrangement as deeply painful.

He called his children both his “greatest accomplishments” and his “greatest failure,” saying the relationships had “crashed and burned” after the divorce.

Duke later publicly responded to those remarks.

She said she had remained civil with Owen and had tried to give him advice about repairing the relationships, but claimed he was not respecting the children’s boundaries.

Her message suggested that the estrangement was more complicated than Owen’s public comments alone might indicate.

There Has Recently Been One Sign of Family Progress

Despite the years of tension, the family recently appeared to take a small step forward.

In July 2026, their son Austin shared a photograph showing himself with both Owen and Duke.

According to Austin, it was the first time his parents had been together in six years.

“Got my parents back together for the first time in 6 years. God is good,” he wrote alongside the image.

The photo did not mean Owen and Duke were reconciling romantically.

But after years of public conflict, even appearing together with their son carried significance.

That recent moment makes Owen’s latest comments about the marriage particularly striking.

He is now looking backward at why he believes that relationship failed while simultaneously beginning a new marriage with a new perspective.

Owen Is Not Trying to Pretend the Cheating Never Happened

One of the most notable aspects of the interview is that Owen does not deny his past behavior.

He acknowledges that he cheated.

The question he is trying to answer is why he believes the same thing will not happen again.

His answer is not based on age, maturity or fear of repeating past mistakes.

Instead, he keeps returning to one factor: connection with his current wife.

He says he enjoys intimacy with Johnson.

He looks forward to being around her.

And the two talk openly about their expectations.

For Owen, those differences appear to give him confidence that his current marriage is operating on completely different terms.

Whether others accept that explanation is another matter.

Some listeners may hear his comments as an attempt to rationalize infidelity by pointing to problems inside his first marriage.

Others may see them as a candid acknowledgment that a relationship had emotionally and physically ended long before the legal divorce arrived.

Owen himself appears to understand that distinction is important, which is why he repeatedly stressed that he was not trying to insult Duke.

A Very Different Chapter of His Family Life

Owen is now living a dramatically different family life from the one he had during the final years of his first marriage.

He is newly married to Johnson and raising their young twins.

At the same time, he continues navigating the complicated aftermath of his divorce and his relationship with his older children.

That makes his recent remarks about fidelity more than a simple confession.

They are also a statement about what he believes he learned.

Owen says his first marriage had reached a point where he and Duke were no longer emotionally or physically connected in the way he believes spouses should be.

His second marriage, he says, feels different.

And because of that difference, he is making a promise about the future that is difficult to misunderstand.

He cheated before.

He says he does not plan to do it again.

Whether that confidence proves justified will remain private between Owen and Johnson.

But after years of public conflict surrounding his first marriage, Owen is making one thing clear: he believes the relationship he has now is not a repeat of the one he left behind.