When Snoop Dogg first met wife Shante Broadus as a teenager attending Long Beach Polytechnic High in the ’80s, he discovered his yin and his yang.
“She gets me,” Snoop, 52, says of his wife, also 52, to whom he’s been married for 27 years. “She is a great mother, a great grandmother, a great wife and a great friend. She knows how to push all my buttons to make me act like a fool or make me act cool, and I love that.”
Their path was not easy. After marrying in 1997, the couple, who have three children and several grandchildren, briefly split in 2004 before renewing their vows four years later.
Snoop Dogg and wife Shante.
Shante Broadus/instagram
“In relationships like this, the road is tough at first because success is new for both of us,” Snoop tells PEOPLE. In the past when it came to his wife, he said he felt like, “Some things I want you to be a part of some things I don’t want you to be a part of to protect you.’ But not knowing that she was supposed to be there all the way and protect [me].”
He adds: “As time goes on, you learn, ‘OK, you’re in control. You run this, you run that, because I make bad decisions.’ The good in relation to my evil is her.”
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Snoop Dogg and Shante Broadus in November 2018.
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
As for what he brings to the relationship, Snoop says, “I’m a loving, caring, caring husband. My wife has never worked a day in her life, and that’s what I love is being in a position where you don’t you have to work, I am work and you are my backbone.”
As for Shante, “Over the years she’s grown with me to know what I do and how I do it and to give me the space to do it,” he says. “What she helped me with was patience, understanding what family is, making time for family and not talking.”
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The Broadus family.
Shante Broadus/Instagram
The star wants to pass on her hard-earned marriage advice to others. “How can I stay married for so long? I have a strong wife with a strong backbone and a good heart — she’s loving and caring and we’re meant to be together,” he says.
Snoop continues, “When we said we were going to get married, we got married till death do us part. Isn’t that what they say? Not until we do us part in fights or arguments or finances, but until death do us part.”
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Snoop Dogg and Shante Broadus on their wedding day in June 1997.
Frederick M. Brown/Getty
And he has the secret to long-term marital happiness. “Find out what your partner likes most and concentrate on that the most. That’s true love.”
These days, says Snoop, “family is everything. What makes me the happiest in my life right now is that my wife is happy and that everyone in my family is healthy and that we’re all together, and that’s love.”
For more from Snoop Dogg, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.
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Source: HIS Education