When country star Jelly Roll first met the woman who would become his wife at a concert in Las Vegas in 2015, he was living out of his van and had been in and out of jail a whopping 40 times.
As for Bunnie XO – the focus of his affections whose real name is Alisa DeFord – she was making upwards of $100,000 a night as a ‘high class’ escort in Sin City.
Flash forward some 10 years, and the musician – real name Jason DeFord – has risen the ranks to become one of the world’s biggest country stars with three Grammy Awards to show for it.
Bunnie, meanwhile, officially retired from sex work in 2023 and has morphed into a devoted stepmother to her husband’s two children from previous relationships – Bailee Ann, now 18, and son Noah Buddy, nine.
And from their shared experiences of various drug addictions to Jelly Roll’s admitted months-long affair, it seemed to many that the couple were able to overcome just about anything.
That was until Monday night, when it was revealed the singer, 41, had dramatically filed for divorce from Bunnie, 46, last month in Tennessee, according to court documents obtained by the Daily Mail.
Jelly Roll, 41, has filed for divorce from wife Bunnie XO, 46, after nearly 10 years of marriage (pictured in February 2026)
The country music singer and the former OnlyFans star have been open about their relationship struggles, including infidelity and issues with drug abuse (pictured in June 2024)
Fans and insiders alike were shocked at the news.
‘You couldn’t tell he was going through something. If the divorce was on his mind, you’d never have know,’ a source told the Daily Mail.
But other insiders can now reveal that Jelly Roll’s reasoning for ending the marriage was myriad.
Most obvious has been the singer’s very public shift toward Christianity. After winning a Grammy for best contemporary country album in February, he held a Bible aloft and told the gathered crowd that, ‘Jesus is not owned by one political party. Jesus is not owned by no music label.’
This ardent newfound faith and purposeful distancing from his past substance abuse and jailtime, say insiders, no longer necessarily aligns with his wife’s former escorting and online sex work.
And while Bunnie may have left the most extreme aspects of that life behind, her podcast – titled ‘Dumb Blonde’ and often used to discuss not-so-safe-for-work topics such as her marital sex life – as well as her raunchy social media posts, have begun to cause problems at home.
In fact, just hours before the divorce came to light, Bunnie had stripped down to a satin bralette and matching thong on Monday and posed for a sexy snap which she shared to Instagram.
‘There is just such a conflict in what’s going on. He’s preaching this Christian way of life. She’s posing mostly naked and talking about porn and penises on her podcast. At every turn, she’s just kind of embarrassing him and wrecking every PR narrative that they’re trying to create. This is the talk of the town [in Nashville],’ said another insider.
It is certainly no secret that contemporary Christian music has reached massive mainstream popularity, and nowhere more so than in the home of country music, Nashville, where Jelly Roll and Bunnie couple own a $6 million mansion.
‘There’s so much money in [Christian music], but [his renewed faith] is just an act in my opinion,’ a source said.
‘He saw a lot of money in this market and told Bunnie to get it together. But she wouldn’t stay in line and it is destroying his brand.
‘She just wants to be what she is. She’s been an escort and in porn and gets her validation and audience from being in a G-string. That’s been her life but now, suddenly, he’s a preacher and she’s a preacher’s wife.’
Beyond these clashes over differing ‘lifestyles’, the couple are also said to have had disagreements about whether to expand their family.
Bunnie told fans in 2019 that they had been undergoing IVF after discovering that he fallopian tubes are blocked. The treatment was seemingly unsuccessful and Bunnie later revealed that she and her husband had sought out a surrogate, but again to no avail.
Now, an insider says: ‘Both [she and Jelly Roll] wanted more children, but disagreements over timing and his increasingly demanding career have created ongoing tension. Ultimately, he felt it wasn’t wise to move forward with having more kids when the stability of their relationship remained uncertain, and they seemed destined to keep repeating the same cycle.
‘Their relationship has always been passionate but turbulent, with frequent almost-breakups followed by intense reconciliations.’
Indeed, Jelly Roll and Bunnie’s 10-year marriage endured its fair share of scandal and personal upheaval.
At his fattest, for instance, the famously large singer weighed in at a gargantuan 550 lbs. Since 2022, he has shed nearly 300 of those pounds – and all without the help of weight-loss drugs.
He felt he had to lose the weight, he said last year, because ‘I could feel myself dying’ and had suffered serious heart issues.
A source told the Daily Mail that Jelly Roll’s public shift toward Christianity created a ‘conflict’ in his relationship with Bunnie (pictured in November 2022)
Sources also shared that ‘tensions’ were furthered over disagreements about expanding their family (pictured in January 2026)
Meanwhile, in her recent memoir, Bunnie shared how she and Jelly Roll initially bonded over their equally sordid pasts.
She had been working as a ‘high class’ escort making upwards of $100,000 a night. She had also dabbled in cocaine, Xanax and crystal meth, and admitted to spending a staggering $2 million on drugs during her 20s.
Bunnie had been married twice before, while Jelly was struggling to gain custody of his then seven-year-old daughter Bailee Ann from a previous relationship.
He had also been arrested some 40 times since the age of 14, having been convicted in 2003 for felony robbery and again for dealing drugs in 2008.
But the chaos didn’t end there, with Jelly Roll enduring several years of heavy cocaine addiction before finally getting sober in 2017.
‘I had to learn that you could drink alcohol without doing cocaine,’ he later said.
But despite that sobriety, in 2018 and only two years into his marriage, Jelly Roll had an affair with a previous ex-girlfriend.
As a result, he and Bunnie briefly split, before she forgave him and took him back. She wrote in her memoir that it would ‘take years for me to put the affair aside.’
For his part, the singer has called the infidelity ‘one of the worst moments’ of his life.
And as recently as February this year, the singer gushed over his wife, saying he ‘would have ended up dead or in jail’ without her.
Jelly Roll, real name Jason DeFord, has two children from previous relationships: daughter Bailee Ann, 18, and son Noah Buddy, nine (pictured in July 2024)
At the 2026 Grammy Awards, Jelly Roll held up a Bible and exclaimed ‘I love you, Lord’ on stage as he accepted the Grammy for
Clearly, those feelings have now changed.
But, for all the apparent disagreements between the couple, one rumor that insiders were particularly keen to put to bed was the suggestion that Bunnie had been unfaithful.
Last month, eagle-eyed fans noticed a video she posted on Instagram of her and Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger hugging and chatting backstage at a concert.
Alongside the video, Bunnie wrote: ‘The moment I finally got to be back in his arms.’
‘Swoon,’ she also added, with a heart-eye emoji.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, those captions prompted some speculation Tuesday that Bunnie had already moved on with Kroeger, who was previously married to singer Avril Lavigne.
However, an insider told the Daily Mail that there is ‘quite literally zero truth’ to any rumors of a relationship with Kroeger, and if anyone has been unfaithful it is Jelly Roll – back in those early torrid days of their marriage.
‘He was perhaps much more unfaithful than than he let on early in the relationship,’ the insider said.
As for what’s next, the source added: ‘You reach a day where you realize maybe I didn’t love this person. I loved the chase and the ability to hustle and grind together. But now everything has slowed down and they’ve had time to really see it.’
The Daily Mail has contacted representatives for Jelly Roll and Bunnie XO for comment.
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