NEED TO KNOW
- Jelly Roll said on the Human School podcast that cheating on his wife Bunnie Xo was “one of the worst moments” of his adult life
- The singer said he’s put in “a lot of work to repair” their relationship
- The couple celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary in September
Jelly Roll is opening up about what he says was “one of the worst moments” of his adult life: cheating on his wife, Bunnie Xo.
The “Need a Favor” singer, 40, and Bunnie, 45, tied the knot in 2016, and recently celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary. But the couple went through a rough patch several years ago, one that Jelly said he doesn’t often “talk about… publicly.”
“One of the worst moments of my adulthood was when I had an affair on my wife,” he said on the Oct. 21 episode of the Human School podcast. “Because it was the first time that I was like, ‘I really can’t get this right at all. I know I’m in love with this woman.’ It just really, really, really blew me back.”
Jelly said that he put in “a lot of work to repair” their relationship, and he and Bunnie today are “stronger than we could have ever been.”
“I wish our story would’ve went in the way that it never had an affair, and I’m in way glad it happened, but man, I’m proud of who we are today,” he said. “I truly am.”
The singer added that at the time, he’d surrounded himself with a bad crowd whose behavior had started to rub off on him.
“I was hanging around a bunch of people that were cheating on their wives. When I was doing cocaine, I was hanging around a bunch of people that were doing cocaine,” he explained. “I used to be proud of long-standing friendships just because they had a number attached to them. Horrible humans. But I would just be proud to say, ‘That dude’s been with me 12 years.’ S—-y human!”
Now, Jelly said, he wants to “only be around people I want to be like” and who push him to be better.
Jelly did not offer specifics as to his affair, though Bunnie (real name Alyssa DeFord) previously alluded to a rocky moment in the couple’s relationship in 2018, saying in a TikTok last year that they’d briefly split up.
Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo at the 2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards in Los Angeles.
Christopher Polk/Variety via Getty
“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,” she wrote. “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.”
Jelly opened up about his wife to PEOPLE in November 2024, describing her as someone who shows up “when the chips are down.”
“I prioritize family and that’s what anchors me down,” Jelly (né Jason DeFord) said. “My world shrunk when I focused on one woman.”
He proposed on stage in 2016, and they exchanged vows that same night. In 2023, Jelly and Bunnie renewed their vows at the same Las Vegas chapel where they said “I do.”
Bunnie celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary on Instagram on Sept. 2 with a series of photos of the couple in Germany.
“Life is ours, we live it our way 💫 9 years of us ✨,” she captioned the post.
