Kurtis Blow Biography, Age, Son, the Breaks, Wife, Songs, Albums, Net Worth
Joseph Ward Simmons, the son of Kurtis Blow, Joseph Ward Simmons (born November 14, 1964), better known by the stage name Run, Rev. Run or DJ Run, is a musician, rapper and actor. Simmons is one of the founding members of the influential hip hop group Run–D.M.C. He is also a practicing minister, known as Reverend Run.
He found new popularity in 2005 with his family’s MTV reality show Run’s House.
Before Run–D.M.C., Simmons was the lead vocalist in the hip-hop group named “The Force.” He founded Run-D.M.C. as a lead vocalist along with friend Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels and the late DJ Jason “Jam-Master Jay” Mizell.
Run began using the stage name of “Rev. Run” after he was ordained as a Pentecostal minister by E. Bernard Jordan, Simmons’s spiritual mentor. Jordan also named him “Protege of the Year Award” in 2004.
The same day, symbolic of his “Prosperity Ministry”, there was a “Rolls Royce parade outside the Plaza Hotel in New York City, “featuring Jordan’s Phantom Rolls Royce. The new $325,000 Phantom had been a gift from Reverend Run as a “thank you” for Jordan’s mentoring support.
Simmons married Valerie Vaughn in 1983. They have three children: Vanessa Simmons, Angela Simmons, and Joseph “Jojo” Ward Simmons, Jr…
He married Justine Jones on June 25, 1994. With her, he had three more children: Daniel “Diggy” Simmons III, Russell “Russy” Simmons II, and Victoria Anne Simmons. Victoria was four pounds, five ounces when she was delivered via cesarean section.
She died shortly after being born on September 26, 2006, due to omphalocele, a birth defect that caused her organs to grow outside her body.
The Simmons’ allowed MTV camera crews of Run’s House to document baby Victoria’s death, telling PEOPLE that “God, in my mind, gave us something to go through in front of America, so we documented it on-camera – not so much to show you sadness, but to show you how we, as ministers, would handle this tragedy.
The kids found out on-camera. Diggy was waiting to see, ‘How’s Mommy?’ And the first words we said were, ‘The baby didn’t make it.’” Soon they adopted a baby girl, Miley Justine Simmons.
The Simmons family lives in Saddle River, New Jersey in a six-bedroom colonial-style home that was listed for sale in 2007 for $5.5 million.
In 2017, Simmons said he was adopting a part-time vegetarian diet because God advised him to.
