“I feel a little overwhelmed,” Laterras R. Whitfeld admits. The media personality is the host of the popular podcast Dear Future Wifey, and at the time of our conversation, he’s just posted a life-changing announcement to social media a day prior: He’s getting married. “That thing already has over 60,000 likes.” Whitfield proposed at the California Worship Center on Sunday, July 13, the ministry of Pastor Warryn S. Campbell II and First Lady Erica Campbell, known to most as the Grammy-winning producer and gospel vocalist. The church is the place where Whitfield met his soon-to-be wife a year and a half ago.
His award-winning relationship podcast, which launched in 2020 and interviews couples on their love journey, experts in romance, people hoping to marry and more, has operated with the purpose of not only highlighting the blessing marriage can be, and give hope to those who want to be a Mr. or Mrs., but to also prepare Whitfield as he looked for love and marriage for himself. The host ends every episode with a letter to his future wife based on what he gleaned from his guest(s). Now that he’s engaged, people are excited — and digging for info. Hence, the reason he chose to reveal the good news without displaying his fiancée just yet. The announcement images, instead, show her behind him, the bride-to-be’s hand in the camera frame, with a 7.5 carat engagement ring he designed with Black-owned Philadelphia Diamond Company, gleaming.
“There are people saying, ‘I’m gonna go put the hand in AI to identify who it is!’” he says, smiling. “It’s funny. They’re speculating about different people who’ve been on my podcast. It’s creating the anticipation I wanted because I do want to offer this to the world when the wedding actually happens. Live stream everything. So I love what it’s already creating.”

For now, though, he wants to keep her identity private. It’s understandable. When the man behind Dear Future Wifey says he’s found his “wifey,” people are bound to have lots of questions, expectations, and things to say. In addition to easing her into his world, he also wants to be protective of the foundation they’re establishing before they go public.
“The privacy and the anonymity are so important because while people are celebrating a lot of times, people try to destroy,” Whitfield says. “I want to make sure that it’s extremely secure before it becomes public because she will be thrust into the spotlight with hundreds of thousands of people, and that can be overwhelming in and of itself.
“I had a guest on my podcast, Jerry Flowers Jr., who said, ‘Make sure that you don’t have fingerprints in the cement before it dries,’ and what that means is, sometimes you can have other people’s touch on your relationship before you cement the deal,” he adds. “I look at our marriage as something that will cement our covenant and our relationship, and so you can’t get all these other people’s fingerprints in it while attempting to dry and fortify what we’re trying to build.”
But there are some questions people have that Whitfield is ready to answer. Like the question of how they met. It happened at the California Worship Center in November 2023 while Whitfield was present to film an episode of his podcast with the Campbells.
While a woman attempted to slide her business card to him, which read, “Call me,” the woman who would become his fiancée approached. “She said, ‘Hey, I really like your podcast!’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, thank you so much! And before I knew it, I just grabbed her hand, and I walked out of the church with her into the lobby, and I caught myself. Oh my God! I just grabbed her hand. She may have a boyfriend, or she may be married. I don’t know nothing about this woman. What made me grab her hand like that?“
But she wasn’t spoken for. The two ended up speaking for a bit in the lobby and found out they both were acquainted with one of the guests who was being featured on the podcast that day. She suggested they all go out to eat. He asked her to DM him to make it happen, and also so that people wouldn’t see him asking for her number, attracting attention. “I already done grabbed her hand!”
After waiting with anticipation, she would finally DM him. Although they didn’t go out to dinner with her friends, the two met up for coffee before Whitfield had to fly back home. They only had 20 minutes to spare, but it was enough time to make a lasting impression. “We were platonic friends for about a year and a half. She would call me, ask me advice about guys that she dated or was dating, and I was dating women, and in March [of 2025], I was just like, you know, what? I really like her. I think there’s something more here,” he says.

After a talk with his therapist, Love McPherson, who encouraged him, he decided to make his move. “In March, I told her, I want to take you on a date. I want to see if there’s something more to this. And she said, okay,” he recalls. “I said, when are you available? And she said March 18. Since March 18, we’ve been inseparable.”
The two realized they were on the same page about the future, so when he suggested pre-engagement counseling soon after, she was in favor of it. “We did about three months of pre-engagement counseling, and it’s been beautiful,” he says. “God identified her and said that’s my wife. So I flew in and talked to her mom, flew in and talked to her dad, and said this is where I want to be.”
He could confidently do this because Whitfield “prophesied” that he was going to get married in 2025. He admittedly felt some doubts after declaring it, but the people in his life kept him on the path to believing it would happen. “How am I gonna actually marry somebody and I don’t know who it is? That’s crazy,” he remembers thinking. “But I did an interview with Egypt Sherrod and Mike Jackson. I was in the middle of the interview, and I said, ‘I’m gonna be married by the end of this year,’ and then, about 10 minutes later in the interview, I said, ‘I mean, worst case scenario, she’ll just have a ring on her finger.’ I started doubting myself. Mike said, ‘Hold on. No. You said you’re gonna be married by the end of this year. You stay with that, don’t change it.’”
Jamal and Natasha Miller, in January, told him that he would be married this year. Cindy Trimm said, “You’re at the place that you’re supposed to be at. You’re healed.” So many people confirmed what would come. So he leaned into fear to overcome it. That’s what led him to ask his good friend out on a date, and also what prompted him to propose in a big way just a few days ago.
“I had a song co-written with my friend Michael Bethany called ‘So Marry Me,’” he says. “I had it produced by Warryn Campbell, and I had it performed by Kenny Lattimore.”
He adds, “She walked into this place. I had her friends and family line the aisle, and they each handed her a rose. One pink, one white, one red for the symbolic meaning of those colors. And so we walked down the aisle, and then I told her, ‘This is what I’ve been planning all this time,’” he says. “I brought Kenny Lattimore out. He sung this beautiful song, and then I brought her up afterwards, read her a letter, because at the end of the Dear Future Wifey podcast, I always write a letter to my future wife, and so I read her letter as my proposal and got down on my knee.”

The couple plans to tie the knot this November in Dallas, Texas, which will fulfill his declaration that he would be married this year. The idea of doing life together is exciting for the couple, but also a little overwhelming for Whitfield’s partner.
“She’s like, ‘Oh my, God, people are going to be picking me apart once they find out who I am,’” he says. “She loves the fact that we’re protected in this bubble, that it’s this place where she just has me to herself, and there’s not a lot of emphasis on who she is and whatnot. And so, she’s taking this moment as a form of reprieve to be able to relax before she’s made a celebrity overnight,” he says jokingly. However, she will be, as he plans to have her co-host Dear Future Wifey moving forward. He’s already getting her prepared.
“We’re doing mock interviews and talking about all that because she’s a perfectionist,” he notes. “She’s like, ‘I just want to make sure I’m doing this right.’ I said, ‘Listen, you’re going to be great. The reason I fell in love with you is the same reason why other people will fall in love with you.’ She’s just a very sweet spirit. She’s amazing. Like, I said, God did his big one with her. I love this woman.”
Co-hosting the podcast, by the same name, would keep the brand consistent and bring everything full circle, making the platform all the more impactful. “It’s speaking to the other people who are manifesting, believing in God, and hoping for their future wifey, or the women believing in God, hoping to become future wifeys, so it becomes more of a gift to everybody else and no longer just my personal journey,” he shares.
When it comes to what Whitfield is looking forward to most about becoming the husband he’s always wanted to be, it’s having a partner to support him and providing that same love and care right back.
“I feel settled without settling, and what I mean by that is that my heart is at ease, and I didn’t feel like I had to compromise and settle,” he says. “I can rest in her, and that’s the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life.”
He encourages other people looking for their special person not to be afraid to boldly declare that it will happen, just as he did when 2025 began.
“The Bible says speak those things that be not as though they were, and so you have to first declare it and speak it, but it’s also important to surround yourself with other people who can hold your arms up when your arms get weak. I call them Destiny Helpers,” Whitfield says. “I do get weary in my well-doing. Even though the Bible says, “Do not grow weary in your well-doing, in due season you shall reap if you faint not,” the reason why he said, “if you faint not,” is because we will faint, but we can’t give up. So, I would tell people to declare it and believe it. And even if it doesn’t happen on the day that you prophesied or when you believed that it would happen, the fact that you created intentionality in your life, I guarantee you, you’re a step closer than you were without having that intentionality.”
Words of Wisdom
Whitfield shares his favorite words of advice from past Dear Future Wifey guests.
You have to fight for the future in the present. – Kevin “Kevonstage” Fredericks: “That to me is so powerful, because a lot of times, we’re making temporary decisions that can affect our future. And so, when he said that, that resonated with me.”
You have to become an elite decision maker. – Wallstreet Trapper: “Being an elite decision maker, meaning that as a man, you have to be decisive enough to know what things can entrap you as well as those things that can bless you.”
Differences aren’t deficits. – Karega Bailey: “A lot of times, we may meet people, and we find that we have differences in our relationships, and we look at it like something’s wrong with you because you’re not like me. It won’t work. But it will work. Differences aren’t deficits. If you learn how to lean into those differences, then you can actually extract the gems from that and say, my future wifey is made different from me and I want to build an amazing covenant with those differences that she has and those differences that I have and we’re able to build something great together that I couldn’t ordinarily build myself.”
The right relationship makes you push past yourself. – Whitney Davis: “That means a lot to me because in these moments that me and my future wifey have going through counseling, I kept saying, I’m not going to run away from this situation. I keep pushing past myself, the things that may trigger me. The things that may upset me, the things that frustrate me, and her. The things that I do that frustrate her that she has to push past herself to lean into something greater.”