Jelly Roll and his wife, Bunnie XO, attended the 2024 Country Music Association Awards in style.
Jelly Roll (real name Jason DeFord), 39, and Bunnie (real name Alyssa DeFord), 44, posed at the Wednesday, November 20, event at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. Jelly Roll looked dapper in a black suit and black shirt, blinging out the look with sparkling necklace. Bunnie, for her part, shimmered in a black off-the-shoulder gown with a lace corset, styling her blonde locks in curls.
Jelly Roll is up for three awards at the ceremony: Entertainer of the Year, Album of the Year for Whitsitt Chapel and Male Vocalist of the Year. (He previously won New Artist of the Year in 2023.)
As for his personal life, Jelly Roll met Bunnie at one of his concerts in Las Vegas in 2015. The couple got engaged in August 2016 and eloped the same day that he proposed.
Earlier this year, the pair revealed their plans to have children via in vitro fertilization with a surrogate. (Jelly Roll is already the father of daughter Bailee, 16, and son Noah, 8, from previous relationships.)
“This journey with IVF, we sat down a couple months ago,” Bunnie explained during a July episode of her “Dumb Blonde” podcast. “And I was just like, I feel like I’ve accomplished so much in my life. And the only thing that’s left is to raise a baby and garden. I’m in my baby mama [and] gardening era.”
Although Bunnie already knew she wanted to have kids, she was surprised that Jelly Roll was open to the idea of expanding their family.
“J was like … ‘I would love to have a baby with you,’” she continued. “And that was not the response that I thought he would say. I was just like, ‘Wow really? Have you always felt like that?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I will always have a baby with you. If you want to have a baby, cool. If you don’t, cool. Whatever you want to do.’ So now he’s, like, really excited about it.”
The duo have been seeing a fertility specialist since 2019 but did not feel prepared to pursue their options until recently.
“We’re on the fence of having twins,” Bunnie elaborated. “We think we want to have twin boys. I’m not sure. We could have one, we could have two. We don’t know what we’re going to do yet. We don’t plan on implanting until February 2025.”
While Bunnie noted that the twosome wanted to keep their IVF journey private moving forward, she detailed why they chose to use a surrogate.
“I’m just going to be honest with you guys. I am not going to carry the baby,” she shared. “I am not mentally well enough to let my hormones get out of whack. … I have gotten to a place where I’m even-keeled. My anxiety is finally good. I don’t have depression — of course I have down days and stuff like that, but nothing like what I went through in 2019.”
She added: “There is nothing wrong with having a surrogate. I would have trouble carrying a baby. I have lost many babies, you know. One, we don’t have the time to go through that. Two, my schedule does not allow for me to … have another miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy.”
