Watch: Jelly Roll and Wife Bunnie Xo Break Up, Divorcing After Nearly 10 Years
Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo‘s relationship isn’t as sweet anymore.
The “Amen” singer and the Dumb Blonde podcast host have broken up after nearly 10 years of marriage, according to court records obtained by E! News. Jelly (real name Jason Bradley DeFord) filed for divorce on May 18 in Tennessee.
While neither has commented publicly on the split, Bunnie (real name Alisa DeFord) posted a cryptic message on her Instagram Story hours before news broke, writing, “She’s getting her sparkle back” alongside a lingerie photo.
E! News has reached out to their reps for comment but hasn’t heard back.
The couple—who tied the knot in August 2016—had been planning to expand their family after starting their fertility journey back in 2019. As recently as February, Bunnie wrote in her memoir Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetic that they were trying to have twins via surrogate.
“Now that we’re finally stable financially and somewhat emotionally after all the healing we’ve done over this decade together, we’re talking about the future—including growing our family,” the 46-year-old wrote. “J and I have a surrogate, the sweetest woman ever, and soon I’ll be starting my IVF stims.”
At the time, Bunnie said she’d found the perfect person in Jelly—dad to Bailee, 18, and Noah, 9, from previous relationships—writing, “I’ve waited this long to have kids with someone I knew would be a great father—and to be able to make sure they have the best life.”
After all, the pair have been through a lot together over the years after meeting during his performance at the Las Vegas Country Saloon in 2015.
“My wife at the time was an escort, a high-end escort, in Vegas,” the Grammy winner said on a 2024 episode of the Full Send Podcast. “She grew up in Vegas. And at the time, I was [doing] $500 shows, living in that white van. I didn’t have a key to an apartment.”
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In addition to growing their careers together, Bunnie has also been by his side during his recent weight loss transformation, as he made what he called a “major change” in life to drop 200 pounds.
Though, of course, she loved him all along.
“He’s always had the same heart,” she said on TikTok in September. “He’s always had the same soul. I think the most appropriate thing here to say is that he looks so much more healthier now that he’s lost weight.”
“You might miss out on the best love of your life by judging somebody by their weight,” the author continued. “He’s been that dude. I’ll forever be cheering him on no matter what weight he is.”
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His new figure had positive benefits for their romance, as well—including in the bedroom.
“I couldn’t even get aroused I was so big,” Jelly admitted on Joe Rogan Experience podcast in December. “I was having to play Twister to have sex—left foot here, right foot in the X. ‘Are we in there yet? Tell me if you feel something.’ It was bad.”
Indeed, he had come to notice many ways his weight was affecting his life.
“I realized then how much my addiction had been hurting this family, how much that my sex life with my wife was horrible,” Jelly explained. “Dude, I married a f–kin’ big-t-tty, blonde, beautiful woman, dawg.”
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And Jelly isn’t the only one who has been working on his appearance. Bunnie recently shared she had a transformation of her own, undergoing a facelift in March that led to a long recovery process.
“I’m going to be so bruised,” she teased on the March 13 episode of her Dumb Blonde podcast. “It’s going to be a little weird. Don’t freak out.”
But aside from their physical transformations, the couple grown emotionally too following a split in 2018, including weathering his affair, which he called “one of the worst moments of my adulthood.”
“I did a lot of work to repair that relationship,” Jelly said on the Human School Podcast in October. “The repair has been special. And we’re stronger than we could have ever been.”
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Bunnie also explained in February how writing her memoir was eye-opening to the “Wild Ones” artist, who refused to read it until she was done so that the book could be “authentically” her.
“He’s like, ‘I correlated it finally, with little bits and pieces that you have dropped to me,’” Bunnie shared in an exclusive E! News interview. “It was little revelations for him too. Of like, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize it was that intense.’”
And when he finished reading, Jelly told her how proud he was of her accomplishment.
“He knows that I’m a perfectionist, but I think that when I do things, there’s always a hint of like, ‘Is she gonna do it the right way or she gonna represent herself the right way?’” she continued. “I think he finally got to see we can pull it together and we can do the damn thing when we need to.”
For more on their relationship, read on.
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And they remain committed to each other.”Who knew that us breaking up in 2018, me moving back to Vegas & you coming to get me back – would have put us on this wild journey called life,” Bunnie wrote on TikTok in February 2023. “We finally committed to each other & did everything we promised each other the first night in 2016. Our castle in the sand had to crumble so we could rebuild on solid ground. I yuh you so mushhh.”
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