Bunnie Xo says Jelly Roll filed May 18 divorce, but they’re still having a baby

Bunnie Xo used her Dumb Blonde podcast episode “The Divorce,” released Thursday (June 18), to settle one of the loudest questions hanging over her split from Jelly Roll: yes, the divorce is real, but no, it is not the end of their family plans. She said the two are still having a baby together, and that they will co-parent, calling Jelly Roll her “best friend” and describing a “little nugget” they are raising as “one big happy family.”

The other big headline fact she anchored everything to was legal timing. Jelly Roll’s team filed for divorce on May 18 in Williamson County, Tennessee, after nearly 10 years of marriage. Bunnie Xo acknowledged that filing and directly addressed whether the decision was mutual, saying, “Was it necessary for us to have a wakeup call? … Absolutely.” She also framed it as something set off by an argument on Mother’s Day, where, in a moment of anger and frustration, she told him to file the divorce papers.

From there, Bunnie Xo moved fast through the rumor mill. One report claimed she cheated on her husband and left him for Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger. She rejected that emphatically, saying, “No, I did not cheat on my husband and leave him for Chad, or none of that,” and adding, “there’s no Chad and Bunnie Xo.” She went further on the relationship question, telling listeners, “Your girl is not ever going to be in another relationship,” and calling the narrative-driven internet chatter “so f-ed up.” For operators in entertainment and media-adjacent businesses, it is hard to overstate the second-order effect here: one false storyline can metastasize into brand damage, partnership risk, and audience churn long before anyone has a chance to correct the record.

She also cleared another rumor, this time about dating timelines. Bunnie Xo said Jelly Roll is not dating fellow country singer Jessie Murph, despite his hit collab with her, “Wild Ones.” The point was not just denial. It was a push back on the audience instinct to connect dots because the internet wants drama more than it wants documentation. She then responded to claims that the whole 10-year relationship was fake, saying, “I don’t care what anybody says: It was real,” and arguing that their accomplishments together only make sense if two people truly loved each other.

On the “how did we get here” question, Bunnie Xo described the relationship mechanics that reportedly preceded the filing. She said she and Jelly Roll “have never been really good at having disagreements,” so they tended to hold things in, which she called “a recipe for disaster.” She said Mother’s Day produced the breaking point. In her telling, she was “so fed up and so tired” that she told him, “Well, then file the f-ing divorce papers.” She described this as the “one cardinal thing you don’t say,” and noted Jelly Roll had previously said it numerous times. Then she said she left, packed a bag, and did not talk to her husband “for weeks,” during which he followed through and filed the divorce papers.

That leads to the most consequential emotional nuance in the whole episode: Bunnie Xo said the divorce was not mutual. At the same time, she insisted on the alternative narrative of resolution, saying her and Jelly Roll are “ending this marriage on the best possible terms that you could ever have a divorce.” She also explained the communications breakdown, claiming that over the past nearly two years they stopped communicating “in the past year and a half,” and that she “always” loved her husband “a little bit more” and was “the glue” holding things together. She described herself as a “chaser” in a “twin flame relationship,” and said she stopped chasing during that period, going into herself, dealing with depression, and handling “losses by myself.” She specifically referenced being “surrounded by death since 2022,” tying that broader strain to the relationship’s weakening.

And then she brought the conversation back to the central plot twist the rumor machine could not handle: the pregnancy plans were not derailed. Bunnie Xo said, “We’re still having a baby together,” and that Jelly Roll “has been so f-in' great about us having a baby together.” She reiterated they are “going to co-parent together,” and that Jelly Roll encouraged her to record the podcast, saying he wanted her to “clear up some sh- for me,” while she added she will “always protect him.” She also updated fans on assets, saying she will receive a property with multiple houses on it and that many of the couple’s animals will live on the property. These details matter because divorce coverage is not just personal. It becomes a public negotiation story, a brand story, and, for audiences, a trust story.

Finally, she addressed the “next chapter” narrative. She said Jelly Roll is starting to date again, and she supported that. “Daddy Roll is probably in his finest season,” she said, adding that he is healthier and “has started dating, which is great. I love that.” She also framed their separation as purposive rather than deceptive, insisting, “Nobody cheated on the other person. It’s literally just we served our purpose for each other,” and returning to the family thread: “What we built together as a team … it’s built on love and it’s ending with love,” and “we are continuing because we are having our little nugget together.” Billboard reportedly reached out to Jelly Roll’s team for comment, but no quoted response appears in the source.

What executives and board members can take from this is not gossip. It is the operational reality of modern brand risk: narratives move faster than legal filings, misinformation can become “fact” to audiences overnight, and the first credible corrections matter. Bunnie Xo did that here by tying rumor denial and relationship context to concrete legal dates (May 18 in Williamson County) and to an ongoing co-parenting plan. In an era where attention is a currency and headlines are an executive summary of your personal life, getting the timeline right is how you stop the second story from writing itself.