Sometimes the most telling moment comes not in what you say, but in when and how you say it. That’s exactly what happened Thursday night (June 18) when Jelly Roll paused mid-tour to address his pending divorce from Bunnie XO—right after performing“Liar”on his Little ASS shed tour in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone in the room.
Just hours after Bunnie XO released a new episode of her Dumb Blonde podcast laying out her side of the split, Jelly Roll took to the stage with his own message. He was blunt about his boundaries, declaring that this would be the one and only time he’d speak publicly about the breakup.“Me and my wife are best friends. We will always be best friends. We just got off the phone earlier today. Nobody cheated on nobody,”he told the crowd. That kind of clarity—and that deliberate wall around his personal life—felt almost refreshing in an age where artists livestream their therapy sessions.
The divorce news hit on Monday (June 15) when TMZ revealed that Jelly Roll had filed on May 18 after 10 years together. But the real story, according to Bunnie XO’s podcast, is far more complicated than a simple split. A Mother’s Day fight escalated into her telling him to“file the f—ing divorce papers”in anger and frustration, and he actually did it. She admitted the divorce wasn’t mutual, even though she’d said the words herself. What emerged instead was a picture of two people who’d simply stopped communicating over 18 months—a slow fade rather than a dramatic blowup.
What makes this split genuinely different is what comes next. Despite the divorce filing, Bunnie XO made clear they’re still moving forward with their baby plans together.“We’re still having a baby together. We’re going to co-parent together. He’s my best friend,”she said. The couple had been publicly open about their IVF journey and their struggles to conceive, and that dream hasn’t changed. They’re framing this not as a failure, but as a necessary reset—a wakeup call that led them to end things on what Bunnie called“the best possible terms that you could ever have a divorce.”
And when Jelly Roll emphasized that every word Bunnie said on her podcast was true, and called her“my best friend forever”—well, that’s the real headline here. This isn’t a messy tabloid story. It’s two people choosing to stay in each other’s lives, just in a different way. In a culture obsessed with celebrity meltdowns and blame games, that restraint, maturity, and commitment to co-parenting feels almost radical.
About the Author
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
