This Thursday, Nov 5, marks 77 years since Joe and Katherine Jackson got married.
They said their vows on Nov 5, 1949. A few months later, in January 1950, they bought a small two-bedroom house at 2300 Jackson Street in Gary, Indiana. Their family grew, and it grew a lot. Joe and Katherine raised nine children: Rebbie, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, La Toya, Marlon, Michael, Randy and Janet.
Joe passed away in 2018. Katherine is 96 now.
Decades after that wedding, the whole Jackson family came together to celebrate it. In 2009 they gathered in Beverly Hills for a big dinner in honor of Joe and Katherine’s anniversary. Kids, grandkids and all.
One of the grandkids at that table was Jaafar Jackson.
Jaafar is Jermaine’s son. Today a lot of people know him as the young man who played his uncle in the 2026 movie “Michael.” Back then, though, he was just a boy at a family dinner, sitting across from his famous Uncle Michael.
He’s shared some of his memories of his uncle since then. In this clip from the “Michael” premiere, he goes back to the very beginning and talks about his earliest memories of Michael.
Jaafar Jackson shares his first memories of his Uncle Michael
So what happened at that anniversary dinner?
Jaafar told GQ Middle East about it this summer. Michael had big plans on his mind that night. He was excited about his upcoming This Is It shows, and he wanted the whole family to come to London to see them.
Then something happened that Jaafar never forgot.
Michael and Jaafar’s dad, Jermaine, started singing together. They sang a cappella, with nothing but their own voices, right there at the table while the family looked on.
Here’s how Jaafar remembers it, in his own words: “He was very excited to do the This Is It shows and have the family come out to London to see them. [I remember] just sitting across from him and my dad, they were singing a cappella together. I was just observing, it was special…”
You can almost feel that room. Two grown brothers were harmonizing over dinner, with their mom and dad sitting right there to hear it.
There’s one more reason this memory means so much to him. That dinner in Beverly Hills was the last time Jaafar saw his uncle.
That’s why the moment stays with him. Out of all the ways to remember Michael, Jaafar gets to picture his uncle and his dad side by side at the family table, singing.
This Thursday, the Jackson family will mark 77 years since Joe and Katherine started it all with their wedding in 1949. A lot has happened since that small house in Gary.
But somewhere in all those years, there was one warm spring night when the family sat down to honor that marriage, and Michael and Jermaine sang. Jaafar just sat and listened.