Wendy Williams filed for her divorce. Perhaps now her fans will get the transparency we deserve | Elizabeth Wellington

Shortly after the self-titled queen of all media, Wendy Williams returned to her eponymous talk show last month following a mysterious, two-month hiatus, she addressed the swirling out-of-control rumors about her marriage to spouse of nearly 20 years, Kevin Hunter.

“I’m still very much in love with my husband,” the TV personality told her studio audience. “Anybody who has been married for five minutes or 500 years, you know marriages have ebbs and flows. … And don’t ask me about mine until you see [my wedding ring] gone — it ain’t going anywhere, not in this lifetime.”

The next lifetime must have arrived.

Page Six reported Thursday that Williams, 54, served Hunter, 46, with divorce papers at 6 a.m.. The split comes amid persistent, nasty chitchat that Hunter had been cheating on Williams for over 10 years with massage therapist Sharina Hudson. And that Hudson, who is reportedly in her early 30s, gave birth last month to Hunter’s child. This all caused Williams to take a bad turn. She reportedly started binge-drinking and checked herself into a sober house. All the while reportedly dealing with Grave’s Disease, an autoimmune disorder.

I feel bad for Wendy. I grew up listening to Williams on New York City’s WRKS-FM. In fact, back in the late 1980s, I called in to her show and won a $100 for recounting the top songs of the day. A few years later, I interviewed Williams while she was at Hot 97 for a final paper on someone famous. Later, she would spend three years in Philly on Power 99. In 2008 The Wendy Williams Show hit airwaves. She gained national prominence ripping celebrities to shreds on her “Hot Topics" segment. She gossiped. She criticized. She had very little compassion. And she was very rude. She was the definition of gully.

At times, Williams could be transparent, like when she wrote about her miscarriages and drug addiction in her memoir, Wendy’s Got the Heat. But for the most part, she spilled tea. And she could be rancid. Especially when it came to relationships. She talked about everyone from Alicia Keys to Gabrielle Union to Ariana Grande to Oprah. No woman was off limits.

It was probably easier for her to admit that she had an addiction problem than to admit that her relationship was in tatters. I’m guessing that in her mind her marriage made her more of a respectable woman. Her marriage separated her from the chickenheads she talked about so unmercifully on air. Without a husband, she too was a chickenhead. There were allegations of abuse, cheating. Did Hunter really abuse her as Charlamagne tha God insinuated? If it was up to her, we’d never know.

She told America she was staying with her man right up until the end. It was even reported that hours before news broke that Williams was calling it quits, she advised an audience member to stay with her husband because marriage is forever. Really, Wendy? Really? Girl, stop fronting. The jig is up.

It’s really easy to judge, especially when you think you are sitting in the catbird seat, as Wendy tried to prove. But it’s hard to have compassion for others when you don’t have any for yourself, especially when you made a career running other women down whose marriages have failed.

I hope Williams doesn’t strut out on the stage on her next show, manicured fingers wagging, tossing her weave and pretending that nothing has happened. I hope she doesn’t act like the strong black women she thinks we wish we all were. Now is the time for Williams to stand in her truth and admit that life happens to all of us. And marriages end, even in Wendy Williams’ universe.