Jelly Roll's Wife, Bunnie Xo, And Her Stunning Transformation
The following article mentions addiction and domestic abuse.
The past few years have been transformative ones for country singer Jelly Roll. He's catapulted from obscurity to the pinnacle of the music industry. Thanks to the success of 2021's "Ballads of the Broken" and 2023's "Whitsitt Chapel," his stardom seems to increase by the day, while he's won so many music industry awards that he's probably running out of shelf space.
As his legions of fans are well aware, he didn't achieve all that success on his own; standing by his side through it all, good times and bad, has been his wife, Bunnie Xo. While Jelly Roll's shady history — including numerous stints in jail before turning his life around by discovering salvation in music — is well known, his spouse's origin story is no less fascinating, a roller-coaster ride from a difficult childhood to a whole new beginning as a social media superstar and aspiring media mogul. Like Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, and Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, Bunnie and Jelly Roll are a powerhouse couple in the country music world.
So who is the increasingly popular and often-misunderstood woman behind one of Nashville's hottest new stars? Find out by reading further to learn all about Jelly Roll's wife, Bunnie Xo, and her stunning transformation.
Bunnie Xo had a troubled childhood
Bunnie Xo is no stranger to abandonment; as she wrote in the caption for a video she shared on TikTok, her mother left her when she was a baby. After her father remarried, she was raised by him and her stepmother. As she stated in an episode of her "Dumb Blonde" podcast, her rapport with her stepmother was fraught. "I had a pretty abusive relationship with my stepmother ... I was tired of fist-fighting with this woman every day," she shared. When she was just 14 years old, she left her childhood house for good.
Bunnie elaborated on her experience as a teenage runaway shaped her future. "Left home at 14, was told by my family I'd be 'barefoot & pregnant' by 15, also told by numerous people I would never amount to s***," she wrote in a Facebook post. "I never took to heart what anyone said because I just knew I would always be ok no matter what. I figure it out, it's what I do."
As she explained in her podcast, the resourceful teen managed to find enough work to support herself, and was able to afford a place of her own by the time she was 17. "I worked regular jobs," she said of those years. "I literally was in real estate ... I actually was a lifeguard ... I was only f***king 14 years old, so I did whatever I could to make money."
She made big money as a sex worker
At a certain point, teenage Bunnie Xo realized she'd never get far in the world by working the low-paying jobs she'd been taking on. When a friend, who worked as an exotic dancer, saw her $500 paycheck for two weeks of work, she was shocked — and told Bunnie she made that much in one hour of dancing. That, she recalled in her "Dumb Blonde" podcast, was how she wound up performing at a Las Vegas strip club. Despite making $2,500 during her first night, Bunnie hung onto her day job for a while, until deciding it was no longer necessary. The lifestyle she was in, however, brought opportunities that pushed her moral boundaries. "But of course," she explained, "as you dance, and you're in Vegas, you're gonna be offered money to go home with people." She was, and she did, and before long she'd shifted from dancing to sex work.
Rising through the ranks, before long she'd become a high-end call girl, raking in more money than she'd ever imagined. "Literally, I would make $30, $40,000 a night," she revealed. "I had sugar daddies who gave me a half-a-million dollars. I've had cars bought for me, you know, diamonds, jewelry."
While she makes no apologies for what she did to survive, she's also glad to have placed that part of her life in the rearview mirror. "It's a whole lifestyle, and I'm happy that lifestyle is behind me," she said.
How hooking up with a broke ex-con changed her life
The beginning of the end of that chapter in her story began when a struggling musician with a prison past rolled into her life. She first got a glimpse of Jelly Roll while he was performing in a nearly empty Las Vegas nightclub back in the summer of 2015, when she and her boyfriend at the time popped in. "When I met him, I was just instantly like, 'Who the f*** are you? Like, I have to get to know you," she said while appearing on the "Bussin' with the Boys" podcast.
They had mutual friends and kept in touch, even though she was dating another guy at the time. According to Bunnie, once Jelly Roll got her number, he began calling her in search of advice. Given that she was then still a sex worker, she'd occasionally FaceTime with him in between clients. "So we just started a friendship like that," she explained.
At one point, he got in touch to let her know he was coming to Vegas to shoot some videos, and that's when they really connected. Given that Jelly Roll was living in his van at the time, she invited him to stay in her penthouse condo. "You know, the first night I slept on the couch, the second night I slept with her," he recalled during an appearance on "The Golden Hour Clips." "It's a white trash love story."
She was instrumental in Jelly Roll gaining custody of daughter Bailee Ann
When Jelly Roll was in prison, he received a shocking piece of news. "A guard knocks on my cell door midafternoon during lockdown," he recalled in an interview with Billboard. "He goes, 'You had a kid today.' I've never had nothing in life that urged me in the moment to know that I had to do something different. I have to figure this out right now." His eldest child, Bailee Ann, was born on May 22, 2008.
Feeling the responsibility of fatherhood, Jelly Roll knew he needed to be a part of his daughter's life. However, a contentious relationship with the child's mother proved to be a stumbling block. "Bailee's mother made it hard on me at first," Jelly Roll said in the 2023 documentary about his life, "Jelly Roll: Save Me" (via Hollywood Life). "She made me go to court to even see her." When Bailee's mother became addicted to heroin, however, he became desperate to gain custody — not so easy for a flat-broke ex-convict.
That was when Bunnie Xo — whom he'd been dating for just a few months — stepped in. "This woman is like, 'Look, I'm not 100% sure I'll be with you, but I'm gonna do everything I can to help you with this little girl' — because dude, I'm broke," Jelly Roll told "The Joe Rogan Experience" of how she funded the legal battle that allowed to receive full custody of his daughter.
She married Jelly Roll on a spontaneous whim
The love story of Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo is far from conventional, something that was abundantly evident in their 2016 wedding. "We got married kind of randomly," Jelly Roll said of the couple's nuptials while appearing on "The Golden Hour." As he recounted, he was performing in Las Vegas when he popped the question while onstage, completely on a whim. Neither wanted a long engagement and decided to tie the knot then and there. Realizing that they didn't have much time — it was nearing midnight — they made a run for it. "They're closing the joint down ... I'm like, 'F*** it. Let's just go now,'" Jelly Roll recalled. "She's like, 'The courthouse is open for ... 44 more minutes.' I was like, 'Let's f***ing roll.'"
When they emerged from the ceremony, they were spouses: the flat broke rapper with a lengthy prison record who'd been living in his van, and the high-end sex worker with a taste for the finer things. While those aspects of their characters would be deal-breakers for many, Bunnie Xo and her new husband never looked back. "I married my best friend," he wrote in a Facebook tribute to Bunnie that he shared in 2019. "She is the backbone of my entire existence. I love you mama bear."
She became a YouTube superstar
In 2018, newlywed Bunnie Xo posted her first video on YouTube, in which she and husband Jelly Roll answered questions posed by fans for about 15 minutes. That was just the beginning of what came to become a wildly successful career as a YouTuber.
Sure, it's been a slow build, but Bunnie proved she had an innate ability to connect directly with viewers, embracing a warts-and-all honesty that's made her a source of authenticity on social media. As of April 2024, she's posted more than 1,300 videos, while the YouTube channel of "the trailer park Barbara Walters" (as she hilariously described herself) eventually came to garner more than 800,000 followers — and counting.
YouTube is just one of the many social media platforms on which she's distinguished herself. On Facebook, for example, she can boast of having in excess of 3.1 million followers. She's made an even bigger splash on TikTok, where she's amassed 5.4 million followers, and nearly 170 million likes.
Bunnie Xo found even bigger success with podcasting
Bunnie Xo is nothing if not a canny entrepreneur, something she proved by using the popularity she'd built up for herself on social media to create her own media empire. That came to fruition in 2019, when she launched Dumb Blonde Productions. At the company's epicenter was her "Dumb Blonde" podcast, in which she welcomed celebrity guests along with husband Jelly Roll and his daughter, Bailee Ann, among others.
It didn't take long for the podcast's popularity to explode. After just a single year, she issued a celebratory Instagram post to commemorate the podcast's first anniversary. "Watching the podcast grow tremendously this year makes my heart so full," she wrote. "We're doing this organically without a machine backing us and I'm proud to say 'Dumb Blonde' averages 30,000+ downloads a month."
That success, though, was just the tip of the iceberg. In 2023, Bunnie revealed that not only had she signed with a major Hollywood talent agency — William Morris Endeavor Agency — but had increased the volume of those downloads significantly. "THANK YOU FOR 1.7 million downloads for the podcast in January!" she wrote in an Instagram post. "I can't express to you how excited I am to be signed [with] WME now & watching the Bunnie Xo brand grow even bigger."
She graduated from being Jelly Roll's arm candy on red carpets
The rapid success of Jelly Roll in the country music scene placed Bunnie Xo in uncharted territory. As he began garnering award nominations, she found herself embracing a whole new role as his plus-one on the red carpet.
Since making their red-carpet debut at the 2022 CMA Awards, Jelly Roll has consciously taken a back seat to his stylish spouse when it comes to their fashion choices. "I say, 'Get the wife whatever she wants and then figure out how I can accent it,'" he explained in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. "I'm like an extra earring." Unsurprisingly, the two were arguably two of the best-dressed stars at the 2022 CMAs.
While Bunnie clearly enjoyed watching her husband bask in the glory of his success at these events, she turned a big corner in 2024 when she was enlisted to conduct red-carpet interviews during that year's 2024 awards. Interviewed by Billboard on the CMT Awards red carpet, Jelly Roll shared his pride at his wife emerging as a star in her own right. "The coolest moment I've had this entire process is ... when I walked out, they had a placard with my name for where my seat was and then her placard," he said. "I was like, 'You're not a plus-one no more, baby! You're a seat!'"
She and Jelly Roll renewed their wedding vows
After both Bunnie Xo and Jelly Roll enjoyed a run of success with their mutual endeavors, the couple decided that their impromptu 2016 wedding deserved a do-over. As a result, Bunnie revealed in 2023, they were planning to renew their vows. This time out, she was aiming at nuptials that were a lot more impressive than what they'd done the first time. "I'm going to wear a real wedding dress since I didn't the first time we got married in that little chapel in Vegas," she wrote in a Facebook post.
To honor their original wedding, the couple decided to get married at the same Las Vegas wedding chapel — A Stained Glass Wedding Chapel — in which they'd tied the knot the first time. "Who knew a chance encounter in 2015 would lead to our stars colliding a year later in the cutest, tiniest chapel in Vegas exchanging vows of forever when neither one of [us] even knew what forever meant," she wrote in an Instagram post, accompanying a photo of her and Jelly Roll at the altar. "I had no idea who you were yet my soul felt like I knew you for 10 lifetimes."
She retired from sex work
Bunnie Xo has never made any attempt to hide her past as a sex worker, and it's something with which Jelly Roll had never taken issue. He also admitted he was amazed by the kind of income she was generating as an escort. "And she was really making money in the sex work industry. Like, real money. I didn't know that existed," he admitted during an interview with comedian Bert Kreischer's "Bertcast." "If she ever writes a book ... we're talking about like CEOs of oil companies. People you know," he added.
Over the course of their marriage, Bunnie never really cut ties with that career, at least not entirely. In 2023, however, she closed the door on sex work completely when she shuttered her OnlyFans account — something that she revealed in a 2023 Facebook post. "Just officially shut down my spicy site," she wrote. "What a fun ride that was."
A year to the day, she returned to Facebook to mark the anniversary of closing down her OnlyFans account. As she explained, retiring from the sex work industry — and losing out on the considerable amount of money she'd made at it — wasn't something she did without some serious trepidation. "I was SO scared to let go of that part of my life & leave behind the money I was making — wasn't sure how I'd make up that part of my business," she wrote, adding that her income increased tenfold after pulling the trigger.
A good deed for a wronged fan took a murky turn
Bunnie Xo found herself embroiled in controversy when she attempted to do what she thought was a good deed for a teenage student who'd allegedly been wronged. It all started when a Tennessee middle school student named Kalista designed a t-shirt featuring Jelly Roll and Bunnie for a school project. As TMZ reported, Kalista had been warned not to draw the couple, who were deemed to be inappropriate, and was suspended. When Bunnie heard about Kalista's plight, she began to sell her own t-shirts via Patreon, using the girl's design, with the proceeds to be used for a college fund.
However, a Facebook post from the school district disputed that Kalista had been suspended. "We have confirmed with the school that this is a completely inaccurate and a false claim," read the post, adding that they'd identified the parent who'd started the rumor.
Bunnie responded in a Facebook post of her own, revealing she'd stopped selling the shirts due to the controversy. She was, however, dubious that the school was telling the truth. "And everything the mom has said about the school has been backed by numerous other parents," she wrote. "But being a whistleblower for that school was never my intention. It's always been about this little girl having a voice." The money that had been raised from the shirts sold to that point, she added, were being put into a trust account for the girl.
It took decades to repair her fractured relationship with her mom
Bunnie Xo never had a relationship with her birth mom while growing up. In 2022, she revealed that she and her biological mother finally reconnected. "My mom left me when I was three months old," she wrote in the caption accompanying a video of herself hugging her mom, which she shared on TikTok. "Found her again when I was 22, talked to her online for about 15 years & finally met her face to face."
Two years later, she shared another post on social media, revealing that her mother had died. "My mom & I never had a relationship because of her addiction," Bunnie wrote on Instagram. "I spent most of my life so mad at her for not being the mom I needed," she continued. "Not understanding that her one lesson she was sent here to teach me in life was in her death."
She concluded by explaining that whatever issues between them had been laid to rest before she passed. "Rest easy Mama," Bunnie added, "forgiving you was the best thing I ever did."
If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.