Standing on stage in Saratoga Springs, Jelly Roll paused his concert to set the record straight about his divorce.
The country artist, real name Jason DeFord, insisted last Thursday that, despite filing to dissolve his nearly ten-year marriage to Bunnie XO in May, they are still ‘best friends’ and ‘will always be best friends.’
Bunnie, too, even said on a recent episode of her podcast, Dumb Blonde, that their marriage was ending ‘on the best possible terms.’
Indeed, it appears the split between Jelly Roll, 41, and Bunnie, 46, is remarkably amicable – though it seems the same could not be said for some of the former escort’s past romances.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Bunnie’s ex-husband Francisco ‘Frankie’ Lombardo has laid bare his jealousy over Bunnie’s various ‘sugar daddies,’ and how she ‘destroyed’ him when she left him for another man after four years together.
‘Bunnie was the only girl that broke my heart,’ said music producer Lombardo, 43. ‘She left me for another man and… [it] f*****g destroyed my life in a sense. And she got with some dude [who she dated before Jelly Roll] who beat her up, which was a f*****g nightmare.’
Jelly Roll filed for divorce from Bunnie XO in May after nearly ten years of marriage
Before getting together with the country artist, Bunnie was married to a Vegas man, Francisco ‘Frankie’ Lombardo (pictured) for four years before they filed a joint petition for divorce
When the pair first met on MySpace in 2009, Lombardo would confide in Bunnie about issues he was having with his then-girlfriend.
At the time, Bunnie was married to Christopher Gilbert and worked as a dancer at Olympic Gardens, a strip club in Las Vegas, now called Peppermint Hippo. Lombardo said she ‘had nothing,’ ‘no career,’ and was hustling on the side with ‘sugar daddies’ who would send her money.
She asked him to meet up over a drink and, unbeknownst to him, Gilbert would be there too. But that didn’t stop Bunnie from whispering in a confused Lombardo’s ear: ‘I want to make out with you.’
About a week later, Lombardo moved in with Bunnie.
Bunnie and Gilbert, who hails from Las Vegas, were married from July 2008 until September 2009, as seen in documents obtained by the Daily Mail.
Lombardo – who later served Gilbert the divorce papers – is adamant that there was no cheating on Bunnie’s part, and that she and Gilbert were already separated before he moved in with her.
‘It was really f*****g weird, man,’ Lombardo recalled. ‘He’s just a normal dude, kind of a weird dude. And they have a little bit of a checkered past, I guess, but I was glad to serve the guy papers. I’ll never forget that.’
Five months later in February 2010, Bunnie tied the knot with Lombardo in Maui, Hawaii, on Valentine’s Day after they ‘came into a little money.’
‘We were like, “Hey, let’s go to Hawaii and let’s get married.” And we did it,’ said Lombardo, a Las Vegas native himself.
‘I think we took like 20 grand cash. It was just me and her and a photographer and a limo and someone that swore us in and that was it.’
Lombardo described their marriage as ‘very adventurous,’ likening her to Bonnie and he to Clyde.
‘It was good. I really loved her and I think that we were definitely extremely close,’ he recalled. ‘We’re f*****g best friends… She was a good wife.’
Lombardo (pictured center with Bunnie, left, and his mom, Kimberlie ‘Kittie’ Lombardo, right) told the Daily Mail that he and Bunnie were ‘best friends’ during their marriage and that his family eventually moved in with them
Lombardo said he and Bunnie were like Bonnie and Clyde, describing their marriage as ‘very adventurous’ (Bunnie, second from left, is pictured with Lombardo and his mom and dad)
But eventually, Bunnie’s ‘lifestyle’ – in particular her penchant for sugar daddies – got in the way of their relationship, he claimed.
‘When I met her, she said to me right out of the gate, “I just want to let you know that I have a couple sugar daddies,”‘ Lombardo said.
‘And I was like, “What the f**k does that mean?” I didn’t want to know, but she had a couple sugar daddies that would send her money. She never saw them. They lived out of state.’
‘I was super jealous,’ he continued. ‘I wanted her all to myself. There was definitely some arguing and stuff that took place.’
The former sex worker has previously admitted to getting ‘half a million dollars’ from sugar daddies and revealed how they lavished her with cars, diamonds and jewelry.
And, according to Bunnie, she still had ‘sugar daddies’ when she first started dating Jelly Roll, saying on her podcast how she was then ‘turning tricks’ to pay for bills, lawyers, travel and touring. When she met the musician, she worked as a ‘high-class’ escort in Sin City, raking in upwards of $100,000 per night.
‘I literally went on tour with him and was seeing clients just to fund our life at the time,’ she added.
But the true nail in the coffin for Lombardo and Bunnie was when his parents and siblings moved into their home less than a year before the couple ultimately split.
In 2007, Lombardo’s parents were indicted and charged with RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) conspiracy, bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. Lombardo recalled that it resulted in his parents losing their home.
His parents pled guilty to only one count of information or alleging a conspiracy to violate the Wire Wager Act, and in 2010 were sentenced to one year probation.
Lombardo said that with everything ‘crashing down,’ he ‘hit the lowest point’ of his life.
‘[It] totally destroyed our relationship, and I think ultimately that had a very big influence on the way things were handled,’ he said.
Though Lombardo said he ‘didn’t want’ to divorce Bunnie, the couple – who had started their clothing company Cupcakes and Chronic together in 2012 – ultimately filed a joint petition for divorce in February 2014.
Lombardo said that their marriage broke down over ‘jealousy’ and that her sugar daddies and ‘lifestyle’ got in the way. ‘I wanted her all to myself,’ he said (Bunnie, right, is pictured with Lombardo’s sister)
Lombardo and Bunnie (pictured with his mom, center) had built a business together in 2012 – a clothing company called Cupcakes and Chronic
The split was particularly painful for Lombardo given they were trying for a baby and had sought out fertility treatment.
‘I really wanted a baby with her. She wanted to have a baby,’ he said. ‘I know she had issues in the past of ectopic pregnancies and things like that.’
‘Of course I wanted kids with her,’ he added. ‘I loved her. I thought that there was a way. I was like, “You know what? There has to be a f*****g way. We’re going to try everything.”‘
Their fertility struggles echo those she faced with Jelly Roll, which Bunnie recently called ‘one of the loneliest, darkest journeys.’
‘It was so hard on me that for the past year and a half, I became a shell of the person I was because I’m doing these IVF journeys,’ Bunnie said on her Dumb Blonde podcast last week. ‘I’m fighting hard just to be able to produce enough eggs to make a baby with my husband, especially at my age.’
She revealed Jelly Roll had a ‘low sperm count,’ meaning he ‘had to get on a bunch of hormones and a whole bunch of medication.’ That, she said, ‘turned him into a freaking nightmare to be around.’
Despite the divorce, she insisted they are still going to become parents. While its unclear whether the pair have a surrogate or are planning to adopt or get pregnant, Jelly Roll has two kids from his past relationships: Bailee Ann, 18, and Noah Buddy, nine.
And though Lombardo maintained a friendship with Bunnie himself over the years, it was not easy for him immediately after their own break-up. He described watching her move on with an abusive man – who he clarified is not Jelly Roll – as ‘a nightmare.’
In her book, Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetic, released in February, Bunnie detailed that relationship with a man identified only as ‘Karma.’
‘There’s a chapter which I have not read on this Karma guy and I chose not to read it because it was a time after me,’ Lombardo, who went by the alias ‘Paulie’ in the memoir, insisted. ‘I remember when she came to my house with her eyes swollen shut and very badly hurt. I don’t want to relive that.’
Jelly Roll and Bunnie are still ‘best friends,’ despite going through a divorce, and they even have plans to have a baby together (pictured together in January 2026)
Lombardo, for his part, said that he and Bunnie tried to have kids together
Lombardo, meanwhile, was charged with domestic battery by strangulation in December 2023 after an alleged incident involving his then-girlfriend, according to a report by the New York Post.
‘It should be noted that while en route to the jail, Frankie stated that he should’ve beat her ass, beat the s**t out of her, and beat the dog s**t out of her,’ a police officer wrote in the report.
The case was dismissed in 2024, the same year that he and his ex broke up.
Lombardo denied the allegations, telling PageSix: ‘I would never put my hands on a woman.’
Jelly Roll and Bunnie each have their own criminal history.
The musician is a convicted felon and served time for robbery and drug offenses before stepping into the spotlight. Bunnie, meanwhile, has openly discussed her past drug addiction and multiple arrests, even sharing old mugshots online in which she ranges in age from 19 to 26.
After the couple met in Las Vegas in 2015 and wed a year later, it seemed they were in it for the long haul, overcoming their struggles with addiction and Jelly Roll’s admitted affair. So, it came as quite a shock to fans when news of their divorce broke last week.
But according to insiders who previously spoke to the Daily Mail, the Grammy winner has seemingly distanced himself from his tumultuous past amid a very public shift towards Christianity. Their starkly different public personas, insiders say, played a part in their split.
While Bunnie officially retired from sex work in 2023, her candid discussions on her podcast – which often veer into X-rated and touch on her marital sex life – and sultry social media posts do not seem to jive with her husband’s newfound faith.
‘There is just such a conflict in what’s going on. He’s preaching this Christian way of life. She’s posing mostly naked and talking about porn and penises on her podcast,’ one insider told us last week. ‘At every turn, she’s just kind of embarrassing him and wrecking every PR narrative that they’re trying to create.’
But according to Lombardo, who has never met Jelly Roll, now is Bunnie’s time to ‘blossom.’
He told the Daily Mail, ‘I think we’re going to witness her really kind of blossom now and kind of step into herself a little bit more as an individual and not really be in the Jelly shadow.’
But he did send a warning her way: ‘I was like, “Just do me a favor. Don’t get f*****g married.” It’d be the fourth time. It makes no sense.’
The Daily Mail has reached out to representatives for Bunnie XO for comment.
