Jelly Roll stunned fans in Saratoga Springs, New York, on Thursday night when he stopped his own concert mid‑set to address what he called internet 'liars', forcefully denying cheating rumours and insisting he and Bunnie Xo remain 'best friends' despite their divorce.
The on‑stage intervention came after days of rapidly spreading speculation about why the country star, whose real name is Jason DeFord, had filed for divorce from Bunnie in Tennessee on 18 May, with court records made public on 15 June.
The online gossip had only intensified after Bunnie's latest episode of her Dumb Blonde podcast and a flurry of social media posts that fans were busy reading as hidden messages about the break‑up. Nothing is confirmed yet so everything should be taken with a grain of salt.
Jelly Roll Calls Out 'Liars' And Defends Bunnie Xo
Footage from the Saratoga Springs show, quickly reposted on Instagram where it pulled in more than 121,000 likes within hours, captured Jelly Roll pausing his performance to confront the rumours head‑on.
'I wasn't going to talk about this tonight, but while we're talking about liars... the internet is a liar,' he told the crowd, making clear he did not plan to turn the rest of his tour into a rolling press conference. 'It's the only time and the only city I'm going to speak about this so break your camera phones out now.'
The 41‑year‑old then went straight to the point that has been chewing up fan forums and TikTok comment sections: infidelity. He flatly rejected claims that cheating led to the split, instead urging fans to listen to Bunnie's own account.
He said the separation was not caused by infidelity and told the audience to seek out Bunnie's statements on Dumb Blonde, where she has already denied rumours linking her to Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger.
'Me and my wife are best friends. We will always be best friends. We just got off the phone earlier today,' he said. 'Nobody cheated on nobody. She just did a whole podcast about it. You can go watch it. Every word of it is the truth.'
In that Thursday podcast, Bunnie pushed back at the Kroeger speculation and laid out her version of events around the break‑up, which fans have been dissecting line by line. By pointing the crowd towards her show, Jelly Roll was effectively telling his own followers: if you want the real story, listen to her, not to some random thread.
He then closed his short but pointed speech with a message aimed directly at his estranged wife, something you do not often see played out under stage lights.
'That will be my best friend forever. This is the only time I will ever speak about it,' he said, before adding: 'Bunnie, I love you baby. Thank you for those 10 years. They were incredible. Thank you for the next 10 years of friendship and 20 beyond that.'
Inside Jelly Roll And Bunnie Xo's Divorce And Public Response
The news followed weeks of online chatter about the state of the couple's marriage, which has long been woven into Jelly Roll's underdog‑to‑arena‑star story.
Court records show Jelly Roll filed for divorce in Tennessee on 18 May, with the case becoming public on 15 June. His camp has not issued any detailed statement beyond his on‑stage comments, while Bunnie has largely let her podcast and social feeds carry her side of things.
Before the filing surfaced, Bunnie posted a photo of herself in pink lingerie on Instagram Stories with the caption: 'She's getting her sparkle back.' She also shared a clip of herself lip‑syncing to Nickelback's How You Remind Me, a song many fans associate with messy relationships. She never mentioned Jelly Roll, but for followers already on edge, the posts looked like massive hints.
Their backstory is familiar territory to that fanbase. They met at one of his shows in Las Vegas in 2015 and married in August 2016 at the Little White Wedding Chapel. He has repeatedly credited Bunnie with helping steady both his personal life and career, while she has grown her own profile through Dumb Blonde and a highly curated online presence.
As recently as October 2025, Bunnie was pushing back on rumours that the marriage was falling apart. On her podcast, she explained they had been seen together less often because she was undergoing fertility treatment while Jelly Roll remained on tour.
'Someone said the other day, "They used to always be together, and now you never see them together,"' she told listeners. 'I'm like, "Do you guys not know that for the past six months [that] I've been trying to make a baby?"'
She then revealed they still planned to try for a baby together despite the divorce, a detail that does not exactly scream scorched‑earth break‑up.
A Public Marriage, A Public Break‑Up
For starters, this is a couple who built much of their appeal on inviting people in. Fans have watched them joke, flirt and occasionally clash across podcasts, backstage clips and red‑carpet interviews. That kind of access breeds loyalty, but it also means any crack in the façade is going to be picked over in forensic detail.
On stage in Saratoga Springs, Jelly Roll tried to haul some control back. By calling the internet 'a liar' and repeating that 'nobody cheated on nobody,' he was defending himself, yes, but also trying to stop Bunnie being cast as the villain in someone else's fan fiction.
He was careful to frame it as a one‑time thing, stressing this would be 'the only time' he spoke about the divorce on tour. That line may calm some of the noise, or just turn that single speech into the clip everyone endlessly rewatches, looking for extra meaning between the words.
There has been no further official comment from his team, and nothing in the legal filings cited so far refers to infidelity. The space between public documents, podcast confessions and fan theories is exactly where the mad stuff tends to sprout.
For now, the verifiable facts are blunt. A marriage of almost ten years, lived heavily in public, has ended in divorce. Both say there was no cheating. Both insist they are still in each other's lives, still talking, still connected, just in a different shape.
