Jelly Roll and his wife, Bunnie XO, brought the heat to the 2025 Academy of Country Music Awards.
The singer, 40, and the podcast host, 45, walked on the red carpet before the Thursday, May 8, ceremony at Ford Center in Frisco, Texas.
The couple stunned in coordinating black lace looks. Jelly Roll rocked a black ensemble that featured a pop of gold with black lace on top. Bunnie showed some skin with a lacy gown that included multiple cut outs and a high slit.
Jelly Roll is nominated for three awards at this year’s ACMs, including Entertainer of the Year, Male Artist of the Year and Album of the Year.
In the Entertainer of the Year category, Jelly Roll is competing against Kelsea Ballerini, Luke Combs, Cody Johnson, Chris Stapleton, Morgan Wallen and Lainey Wilson. For Male Artist of the Year, he is up against Combs, 35, Johnson, 37, Stapleton, 47, and Wallen, 31. In the Album of the Year category, his 2024 record, Beautifully Broken, is nominated alongside Wilson’s Whirlwind, Megan Moroney’s Am I Okay? (I’ll Be Fine), Zach Top’s Cold Beer and Country Music and Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion.
Jelly Roll and Bunnie (whose real names are Jason DeFord and Alyssa DeFord, respectively) have been married since 2016 after meeting at one of his concerts the previous year. In February 2024, a source exclusively told Us Weekly that the couple “really bonded over being left behind” in the industry during the early stages of their careers.
“Now they feel like they’ve overcome so much together,” the insider said, adding that the pair “have an ‘us against the world’ mentality.”
While Jelly Roll is already the father of daughter Bailee, 16, and son Noah, 8, from previous relationships, Bunnie revealed on her “Dumb Blonde” podcast in July 2024 that the two were planning to undergo in vitro fertilization with a surrogate.
“J was like … ‘I would love to have a baby with you,’” she recalled at the time. “And that was not the response that I thought he would say. I was just like, ‘Wow really? Have you always felt like that?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I will always have a baby with you. If you want to have a baby, cool. If you don’t, cool. Whatever you want to do.’ So now he’s, like, really excited about it.”
As Jelly Roll and Bunnie prepare to expand their family, he has also been focused on getting healthy amid his ongoing weight loss journey.
“I started at 540 pounds and I was 357 pounds this morning,” he said on the Big Night AHT live show in April. “I’m gonna lose another 100 pounds.”
