Growing apart. Five years together and a plethora of heartbreak songs later, many country fans are wondering: why did Kelsea Ballerini and Morgan Evans divorce?
On August 29, 2022, the “Miss Me More” singer announced her divorce from fellow country singer Morgan Evans. “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,” she wrote. “This is now public record so I wanted you to hear from me directly that I am going through a divorce.”
Ballerini continued: “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.”
Morgan also confirmed that the divorce was finalized in an Instagram post on the same day. “I am very sad to confirm that after almost 5 years of marriage, Kelsea and I are parting ways,” he wrote. “I wish it were otherwise, but sadly it is not.”
Months after their divorce settlement, Kelsea went on the Call Her Daddy podcast to reveal how it felt marrying at the age of 22 and why the two divorced.
Why did Kelsea Ballerini and Morgan Evans divorce?
Why did Kelsea Ballerini and Morgan Evans divorce? Well, it all began at the beginning of their marriage.
“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,’” Kelsea recalled. “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.” The two tied the knot in December 2017 after they started to date in March 2016. On if she agreed with her friend at the time, she responded, “I never felt like that until afterward.”
During their marriage, she recalled that there were many moments of tension between her and the “Kiss Somebody” singer and nights of not talking to each other. “There were separations, there was years of couples therapy. There was like, many a night of sleeping on the couch,” she says. “I don’t think it was the first night, but it was a night where I was like, this is not what I want.” She continued, “I slept on the couch the night before the CMAs and I remember I went to rehearsal at the arena and texting him and him being like, ‘I’ll just see you at the carpet.’”
The singer also stated that conversations over pregnancy shifted their view on marriage. “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 explained. “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.’” She then had a discussion of freezing her eggs which caused their discussions to be at a stalemate. She went to “get everything checked to see if I could freeze my eggs” without telling Evans. “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.’”
Image: Mike Coppola/Getty Images
The “This Feeling” songstress talked about why she wanted a divorce and the process that followed up afterward. “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,’” she detailed. “We cried, we hugged. It was sweet. And then something changed and I haven’t talked to him since.”
She also shaded her ex-husband after he wrote the song “Over for You” which was about their split and accused him of capitalizing on their broken relationship. “Who you marry is not who you divorce. As he’s putting out a song about being blindsided, he’s taking half the house that he didn’t pay for,” Kelsea continued, referring to Morgan’s “Over For You.” “How was I married to this person for this long and had no idea that that bit of character was tucked within that human being?”
As for Morgan, he took to social media to address the claims from his ex-wife. “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 in an Instagram post right after the episode was released. “She knows I’m not the type of guy to speak on those things publicly. If this is what she needs to heal, I hope it helps. All I ask is that if 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.”
Though Kelsea reflected on what the relationship was like with their personalities. “I was not perfect, he was not perfect, it was not perfect. And so, there were definitely moments that I look back on where I’m like, ‘Oh, I should of done that different,’ or, ‘I could of showed up here. I could of taken the flight this time,’” she recalled. “And in the unraveling, that thing I ended up sharing with him, just saying like, ‘I need to own the last few years of like, I think, I checked out a long time ago and I need to let you know that.’” As for now, she doesn’t care what her ex thinks of her. “I’m not married to him anymore and I don’t need to care about his feelings anymore. I mean that with all the respect in the world, but his journey is not mine.”
After the episode aired, a source went forward to Page Six claiming that Kelsea cheated on Morgan with Drew Taggart from The Chainsmokers in 2021. It appeared to happen in August 2019 at Lollapalooza Chicago after they collaborated on their hit 2018 track, “This Feeling,” but Kelsea didn’t come forward with it until 2021.
Kelsea is currently in a relationship with Netflix Outer Banks star Chase Stokes. The two met after Kelsea slid into the actor’s DMs and introduced herself. On how she views her relationship now, she said, “I think I’m finally an adult,” she said. “I think that just happened over the last couple of years, and I feel like what that means to me is I have opinions. I have a career that is a priority for me, to show up for myself and the people that I’ve aligned with along this journey. And I have aspirations and goals that are tied to no one, and those are all really important things. I have my s— together, you know what I mean?”
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