When Bunny Zoe found out that her husband Jelly Roll was cheating on her, she considered suicide.
In her newly released memoir, Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetically, the podcaster said she suspected the Grammy-winning singer was having an affair when she was experiencing marital problems around 2018.
The two had just gotten married two years ago.
Bunny, 41, detailed that he became “depressed” after an explosive fight when he moved out of his Nashville home with his daughter Bailey from a previous relationship.
In the end, the 46-year-old showed up unannounced to Jelly Roll’s local concert, which “infuriated” him. Although Jelly Roll denied his infidelity, she later learned that he was “waiting for his ex-girlfriend at a hotel down the street.”
That night, Jelly Roll’s best friend’s wife admitted to Bunny (real name Alisa Deford) that Jelly Roll was cheating on her.
“She confirmed all the doubts and fears I had felt for the past 10 months,” Bunny wrote, adding that it was at that moment that she decided to pack up and return to Las Vegas.
“That night I considered taking my own life,” she revealed. “The pain was so intense that I really wanted to end it all.”
Bunnie retrieved a bottle of medicine from the bathroom and wrote:
“Will it hurt? Will I fall asleep like this? What if it doesn’t work and I wake up in the hospital? Will J care if I die?”
But Bunny ultimately decided not to give in to her suicidal thoughts.
“I took a deep breath. Tomorrow is a new day,” she said. “Time to get the shit out of here.”
After the couple privately agreed to a three-month separation, Jelly Roll finally texted Bunny, promising to eventually tell her the truth.
When the two met, Jelly Roll lied to Bunny, “making up a story about a drug dealer’s daughter he met at a bar and never admitting it was his ex-lover.”
Bunny “trusted” her husband and returned to Nashville. But everything exploded when she discovered that her husband had been texting and calling his “ex-lover” with whom he had been having an affair.
“From that day on, I no longer wanted any information from him,” Bunny wrote. “He had a chance and he wasted it. So I talked to her.”
Jelly Roll’s ex-girlfriend sent Bunny “videos, screenshots, timelines, and (…) everything about their 10-month affair,” including arranging a home for his mistress to live in.
“And more than anything, that’s what made me sick,” Bunny said. “It wasn’t that he would do anything this big, it was that he would be emotionally dishonest.”
Despite the affair, Bunny is determined to forgive her husband (real name Jason Bradley Deford).
“I’m not going to say we just went back to normal. We definitely weren’t,” she admitted, noting that the two had “a lot of fights and arguments” at the time.
During one incident, Bunny felt “murderous” when Jelly Roll said he did not regret the affair.
“It will take years to put the extramarital affair aside,” she wrote. “It’s going to be years before I actually feel like this man loves me and that I’m not disposable.”
Jelly Roll previously described Bunny’s cheating on him as “one of the worst moments of my adult life” on the Human School podcast in October.
“Because it was the first time I was like, ‘I just don’t get it. I know I’m in love with this woman,'” he explained. “I was really, really, really surprised.”
The couple, who have custody of Jelly Roll’s daughter, celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary last year.
“Life is ours and we live it our way 💫 Our 9 years ✨,” Bunny wrote on Instagram in a tribute to her husband.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
