What you need to know
Travis Clark praised his wife Katie Bates in a social media post weeks before he admitted to cheating on her.
While celebrating Bates’ birthday in October, Clark, 24, shared a video montage of the couple’s special moments together.
“Happy 25th to the easiest person in the world to celebrate 🌎🫶🏻,” he wrote in his Instagram caption.
“You love so deeply, you give so much of yourself to everything you do, and somehow you make every season we spend feel special,” Clark continued.
“From the first day I met you, I knew there was something different about you…and I was right. Happy birthday, Kate! I love you 💛👩🏼❤️👨🏻,” he added.
Clark revealed that she had cheated on Bates through a message she shared on her Instagram Story on Saturday, January 17.
The post was shared a day after the Bates couple announced they had suffered the loss of their third child.
Katie Clark/Instagram
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“This is hard to write, but I have an obligation to tell the truth and an obligation to apologize. I was unfaithful to my wife. I had an affair and betrayed her trust many times,” Clark wrote in the post.
“There is no excuse for what I did. This was my mistake and I alone am responsible. I know words cannot express the damage I caused and the depth of the hurt I caused in her life, but I am truly sorry.”
Katie Clark/Instagram
Clark apologized for “the pain, humiliation and betrayal I have caused my wife through my choices.”
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“I understand that an apology cannot repair what I have broken, and forgiveness is something I neither deserve nor can ask for,” the musician said. “I am working hard and taking responsibility to get help and become a more honest and responsible person, no matter the outcome.”
“We ask for privacy and grace so that Katie can process this matter in her own time,” Clark concluded, adding her name to the message.
Bates, who grew up in front of the cameras on the family reality show “Bring Up Bates,” announced on January 16 that she and Clark had miscarried in an Instagram video.
“I’ll be spending the rest of my life without you 🪽,” she captioned the post.
Travis Clark/Instagram
Bates and Clark met in 2019 and began dating the following year.
The couple then got engaged in April 2021 and married in December of the same year.
Bates and Clark welcomed their first child, daughter Haley James, in February 2023, and welcomed their second child, son Harvey Gray, in September 2024.
