He paid his bride off
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Richard Jefferson's jilted bride is bouncing back on her feet.
Kesha Ni'Cole Nichols, the NBA star's former fiancee, set the record straight during the pair's nixed nuptials in a round of talk show interviews yesterday.
The one-time New Jersey Nets dancer kept her game face on during "Good Morning America."
"My philosophy: just keep dancing through life," she says. "Just pick up the pieces and keep going and just keep dancing."
But the stunning stepper admits it takes time to recover from being sidelined. "I probably just lived through every girl's worst nightmare," she says in an interview on "Extra."
Nichols dated Jefferson, a former Nets player, for five years before he committed the ultimate wedding foul. Jefferson, who was traded to the San Antonio Spurs, canceled the couple's extravagant ceremony at the Mandarin Oriental hotel the night before their July 11 wedding – by e-mail.
Rumors swirled that the groom dumped Nichols on such short notice that some guests, who weren't informed, still arrived to the reportedly $2 million bash that never was.
But the brave lady went on air to graciously set the record straight.
"People like to think that I was standing at the altar in my white gown and he didn't show up, but that's not how it happened," she tells "Extra." "We were actually discussing whether or not we would move forward with the relationship the weekend before."
"We had pretty much decided we were going to call the wedding off," she admits, "but just wanted one night apart to really reflect and think about everything."
So she "wasn't in shock" when she received the engagement-ending e-mail.
She also sought to quash rumors that their nuptials carried a multimillion-dollar price tag.
"I know everyone thinks it was this big, extravagant, lavish $2 million wedding. It wasn't that," she says. "It's a recession. There's no reason to go crazy. Things cost money in New York, but it definitely wasn't a $2 million wedding. No matter what decorations we had, what flowers we had and how amazing my dress was, it was all about marrying the person I was in love with."
That person in question contritely called into Howard Stern's show last week to defend his actions.
"We had broken up and gotten back together, broken up and gotten back together so many times, that I didn't want to make this decision and then two days later say, 'Okay, look, I'm sorry," Jefferson said. "It was a decision that I had to make and stick by it."
Nichols, surprisingly, has nothing bad to say about her ex's cold feet.
"Richard didn't do this to me, he did this for me," she says. "He loved me enough to realize that this relationship was not going in the right direction, and he knew he wasn't the person for me. So he cared enough about me to let me go and give me a chance at a new life and a new start."
Granted, she admits that Jefferson has paid her an undisclosed amount to fund this fresh start, which may account for her kind words.
But the independent woman insists she'd still be fine on her own without his money.
"I was making six figures before I met Richard, and I'll be making more after Richard," she says. "It's just a stepping stone to make sure I'm going to be okay."
He got two kids though
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