How can Jelly Roll be getting divorced?

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Jelly Roll has filed for divorce from the woman we all thought was his soulmate.

The Grammy-winning singer — who was born Jason Bradley DeFord — is named as the plaintiff in a divorce case filed in May in Williamson County, Tennessee, against his wife, Alisa Andrea DeFord.

She goes by Bunnie XO, and she’s a model and the host of the popular Dumb Blonde podcast.

Theirs has been the type of love story country songs are written about — she’s inspired multiple tunes the country artist has released as recently as 2024’s “Kill A Man” and 2026’s “Thorns.”

They first met in 2015 when she attended one of his concerts in Las Vegas.

It was a match made in unconventional heaven. He had a lengthy criminal record starting at the age of 14 and resulting in 40 stints in jail or prison, according to his 2023 documentary “Jelly Roll: Save Me.” She was a sex worker.

He was hardly at the top of his game at the time and was living in his van, he explained a few years ago during an appearance a few years ago on the podcast “King and the Sting.”

“It’s a white trash love story,” he said. “When I hugged her, I could just feel the genuineness of her. I could tell it wasn’t an act.”

And while she was seeing someone else at the time, the two stayed in touch, eventually becoming a couple.

A year later he proposed onstage at a Yelawolf and Deftones concert in Las Vegas and they married in record time.

They were deeply in love when an ex gave birth to the singer’s son. It wouldn’t be the only challenge to their relationship.

Bunnie XO helped him get on his feet financially and fight for custody of his daughter, Bailee, from a previous relationship. According to her husband, she dove fully into helping to take care of his daughter when he achieved that goal in 2017.

“I’ll never forget, Bunnie looked at me, and — man, it makes me emotional — she said, ‘No matter what happens with us, I’m going to help you get the girl,”’ he said during a 2023 appearance on “Bussin’ With The Boys.” And I was like, man, what character, you know what I mean?”

More recently, she’s been his biggest cheerleader after he shed almost 300 pounds from his 550-pound frame.

He has credited her with “saving” him and paid tribute to his “beautiful wife” just back in February after winning the best contemporary country album for “Beautifully Broken” at the 2026 Grammys.

“I would have never changed my life without you,” he said, through tears. “I would have ended up dead or in jail. I would have killed myself if it wasn’t for you and Jesus. I thank you for this.”

That type of devotion is one of the reasons why she stayed even after a split in 2018 following his infidelity, something he has called “one of the worst moments of his adulthood.”

In her recent memoir “Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetic,” Bunnie XO explained that the pair had always been open to having other women join them sexually, but that didn’t inoculate her from the hurt of his having a ten-month affair in 2018.

“We both live by the motto that we aren’t each other’s possessions and consider our relationship to be free, not open,” she wrote.

Her life, as she described in the memoir and told People magazine when it published, had been turbulent in the past, including everything from a painful childhood to domestic violence, drug addiction, sexual assault and suicidal ideation.

“I really was just searching for the love of my father in so many men, and then it became a career. I thought I was taking my power back from the abuse that I’d been through, but really I was just in survival mode,” she said. “I took situations from my childhood and let them sour me as I got older, and I want to take full responsibility for my actions. It’s important that if you’re going to give somebody your testimony, you give them the good, the bad and the ugly.”

That factored into her willingness to give her husband a second chance after his infidelity. While promoting her book earlier this year on “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” she said that having received so many opportunities to turn her life around, she felt she owed it to her husband to offer him one as well

“I gave it to him, and it is the best decision I’ve ever made,” she said. “Will he get a third? Absolutely f**king not.”

Reps for Jelly Roll and Bunnie XO did not immediately respond to inquiries.

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