Since rumors of her infidelity, there have been a lot of questions over who Kelsea Ballerini allegedly cheated on Morgan Evans with and the reason reason for their divorce.
Ballerini and Evans, who are both country singers, met while co-hosting the Country Music Channel Awards in Australia in March 2016. After the show, Ballerini asked Evans to take a shot, which led to their first kiss that same night. They got engaged on Christmas day in December 2016 and married in December 2017 in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
After almost five yers of marriage, Ballerini filed for divorce from Evans on August 26, 2022, which was also listed as the date of their separation, according to court documents obtained by Us Weekly. “Friends, I’ve always tried my best to share my life with you in a real and vulnerable way, while also protecting layers of my personal life as they unfold. This is now public record so I wanted you to hear from me directly that I am going through a divorce,” Ballerini wrote in an Instagram Story at the time. “This deeply difficult decision is the result of a journey of love, growth, and effort that ultimately has come to an end. It’s hard to find the words here…but I feel extremely grateful for the years of marriage to Morgan and hopeful for the next seasons. With very active schedules coming up, please be mindful that we are both fragile, actively healing, and showing up the best we can.”
Evans wrote in his own Instagram Story, “I am very sad to confirm that after almost five years of marriage, Kelsea and I are parting ways. I wish it were otherwise but sadly it is not.” Six months later, Page Six reported that Ballerini cheated on Evans two years into their marriage. So who did Kelsea Ballerini allegedly cheat on Morgan Evans with? Read on for what we know about the scandal so far.
Who did Kelsea Ballerini cheat with?
Image: Getty Images.
Who did Kelsea Ballerini cheat on Morgan Evans with? A source told Page Six on February 22, 2023, that Ballerini cheated on The Chainsmokers member Drew Taggart at Lollapalooza in 2019, and didn’t tell Evans about the infidelity until 2021. (Ballerini and Taggart collaborated on The Chainsmokers’ 2018 song, “This Feeling.” Page Six reported that the alleged infidelity, along with other issues in their relationship, led Ballerini to end her marriage to Evans in the summer of 2022, “blindsiding” Evans with her decision. A source close to Taggart, who is currently dating Selena Gomez, told Page Six that he was single at the time of his and Ballerini’s alleged affair.
Ballerini and Evans finalized their divorce in October 2022 after almost five years of marriage. In an interview on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast on February 21, 2023, Ballerini revealed that she knew her and Evans’ marriage was over when she realized that having children was a “fundamental difference” between the two of them. “I don’t know if I want kids at all or not, but that was something we had talked about early on and that was something that I was changing on, you know, because he was ready,” she said. “He was like, ‘I don’t want to be an old dad,’ is what he kept saying. And I was like, ‘I’m just not there yet.’”
Ballerini recalled that she went to “get everything checked to see if I could freeze my eggs” without telling Evans, who reacted negatively once he learned what she’d done. “I took him out to dinner and I was like, ‘For my 30th birthday, I want to freeze my eggs,’ and it was not a good day,” she said. “I think that was when I was like, ‘There’s a fundamental difference here that has happened and that has shifted and … it was like, ‘He wants something out of life and I’m not there.’”
Soon after, Ballerini and Evans had a conversation, where she told him about her decision to end their marriage. “I was just really honest. I was like, ‘I’ve loved what this has brought in my life and I respect you and I respect me and because of that, I can no longer be in this marriage,’” Ballerini said, describing the talk as “really beautiful.” We cried, we hugged. It was sweet. And then something changed and I haven’t talked to him since.”
Ballerini and Evans’ divorce became contentious when she learned from her lawyer and manager that he wanted half of her house or alimony. Ballerini, who confirmed that she and Evans had a prenup, chose to give him half of her house as she didn’t want to deal with the public hearings over their spousal support agreement. “They’re like, you know, ‘He wants half the house.’ … [It made me feel] like shit. It makes me not trust myself,” she said. “How was I married to this person for this long and I had no idea that bit of character was tucked within this human being?”
During the podcast, Ballerini also slammed Evans for his 2022 song, “Over For You,” in which he suggested he was “blindsided” by her decision to divorce. “One thing he was so diehard about in the beginning was like, ‘I don’t want people to ever think I’m using you or riding any coattails or trying to get opportunities through you or anything like that.’ And I never felt like he did,” she said. “To my core — even now, I have to believe that this man was purely just in love with me. Not artist me. Me me. And then we got divorced. And who you marry is not who you divorce. And as he’s putting out a song about being blindsided, he’s taking half the house that he didn’t pay for.”
In the “Over For You,” Evans sang about how he was “just finding out” about Ballerini’s decision to end their marriage. “How long have you been waiting to take our pictures down / How long have you been breaking, why am I just finding out?” Morgan sings in “Over For You.” “How many times did you tell me you loved me if it wasn’t true / I’m just wondering, how long has it been over for you?”
Duriung the podcast, Ballerini accused Evans of using their divorce for his career by releasing “Over For You.” “People questioned him more than they questioned me. My friend Megan — I’ll never forget this — the first time she met him she pulled him aside and she said, ‘You have a lot more to gain from this than she does,’” she said. “I think we were in different places, you know, he’s nine years older than me and he was kind of restarting his career in the States. I was, like, digging my heels in.”
She continued of Evans’ song, “I felt like it was really opportunistic for him to put that out when he did — when we were still going through the legalities of getting divorced. I felt really used in that moment. … His healing journey is his healing journey and I respect that, but publicly exploiting it feels a little nasty to me — before it’s final.”
Ballerini also recalled a time, prior to their divorce in 2019, when she slept on the couch the night before the Country Music Awards because of the “disconnection” she and Evans had in their marriage. “There was just such a sense of disconnection. We hadn’t seen each other, there was a lack of effort to see each other [and] I was getting resentful because anytime we did see each other, I felt like I was carrying that load,” she said. “I was tired. I was just tired of showing up in that way all the time and not feeling like I was seen or matched. And then I was also tired from, like, traveling all the time and, like, giving so much of myself ’cause that’s what I want to do to honor my career too and I think I just felt really depleted and not understood.”
After Ballerini’s interview, Evans released a statement on his Instagram, claiming that Ballerini’s accusations weren’t “reality.” “It’s really sad for me to see this person, who I spent so much of my life with, and loved with all my heart, saying things that aren’t reality and that leave out what really happened,” he wrote. “She knows I’m not the type of guy to speak on those things publicly.” He continued, “If this is what she needs to heal, I hope it helps. All I ask is that you’re on my pages, please don’t be mean. Don’t be mean to Kelsea, don’t be mean to each other. Life’s too short.”
Who is Drew Taggart?
Who is Drew Taggart? Taggart is one of two members of the electronic DJ duo The Chainsmokers, along with Alex Pall. Kelsea Ballerini was featured on The Chainsmokers’ 2018 song, “This Feeling,” from their second studio album, Sick Boy. The song peaked at number 50 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is also featured on Ballerini’s 2017 album Unapologetically.
In an interview with Beats 1 Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in 2018, Ballerini called “This Feeling” was a “dream collab” for her. “I’ve literally said for like two years now, my dream collab is to work with these guys,” she said. “I love that they write their stuff. They’re songwriters, which I relate to so much and respect a whole lot. I love their stuff. I’ve covered it for a couple concerts too which is really fun. Last year, I was opening for a country band, namely Lady Antebellum, and I covered ‘Closer,’ and then I did an Instagram cover of ‘Paris.’ So yeah, super fanning you know.”
Pall added, “I feel like you look at her and you smile like she’s like such a happy person. We got this video back, the video back for the song and just looking at her, she’s such a cutie.”
Pall also told Lowe about he and Taggart decided to feature Ballerini on the song. “I think it’s been really cool because on country radio right now you have Chris Stapleton who’s soul country and then you have a Sam Hunt who is super R&B country,” he said. “Country music’s not just a traditional sound any more. There are so many different branches of it and I think having these kind of collaborations—people that have that stigma in their head of like ‘Oh its all about the truck,’ they’re like ‘Oh wait I like this song. That’s a country singer? Wait let me check out more.’ And it kind of opens the doors more, which is kind of sick.”
Image: Courtesy of Ballantine Books.
For more about Kelsea Ballerini, read her 2021 poetry book, Feel Your Way Through. Feel Your Way Through—which was published a year before Ballerini’s divorce from Morgan Evans—is a collection of original poetry about Ballerini’s relationships with family, body image, self-love, sexuality and youth. The book, which is described as “honest, humble and ultimately hopeful,” is a “deeply emotional and candid” look at Ballerini’s personal and professional life written in her own words. “I’ve realized that some feelings can’t be turned into a song…so I’ve started writing poems. Just like my songs, they are personal and honest. Just like my songs, they have hooks and rhymes. Just like my songs, they talk about what it’s like to be twenty-something trying to navigate a wildly beautiful and broken world,” Ballerini writes.
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