Kelsea Ballerini and Husband Morgan Evans Bonded Over Tequila! Find Out What Makes Their Marriage Work
It’s not surprising that Kelsea Ballerini’s husband, Morgan Evans, has called her “the real deal.” After all, she was only 14 when she was rejected after her first record label meeting—but refused to let that stop her ascent to becoming the country music star she is today.
As Ballerini once recalled in a 2016 interview, the label rep told her “there's already a Taylor Swift. That slot's taken."
It was a hard lesson, she added, as it was “the first time I realized I had to dig into myself, and figure out what I wanted to say." She figured it out, all right; today, she has a ton of chart-toppers, won an Academy of Country Music award, Country Music Association awards and is a Grammy nominee.
“You don’t need to talk or post about strength or kindness or intelligence or talent… you just do it, you are it,” Evans said about his superstar wife last month on Instagram. “The real deal.” Ballerini's response? “This really hit my right in me jet-lagged hungover heart,” she wrote in a comment.
Evans has been by Ballerini’s side for almost five years, while thriving in his own country music career. And when she’s coming out of anesthesia, he’s even the one who brings her chicken nuggets. Keep reading for more of what we know about Kelsea Ballerini and husband Morgan Evans, including how their whirlwind love story happened, why she almost didn’t give the relationship a try, and why some people might think Ballerini is a “terrible wife” and how they keep their relationship strong.
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Who is Kelsea Ballerini married to?
Ballerini is married to Australian country music star Morgan Evans.
How old is Morgan Evans?
Evans is 36 years old, making him about 8 years older than his ex-wife.
What does Kelsea Ballerini’s husband Morgan Evans do for a living?
Evans is a man after Ballerini’s own heart; like her, he’s also an award-winning singer, songwriter and country music artist. He has racked up music awards year after year in his native Australia, including the ARIA Award for Best Country Album. In 2020, he was given the Outstanding International Achievement Award Nashville by The Global APRA Music Awardsbecause of his success around the world.
Evans grew up with his parents and a brother and a sister Down Under; he started playing the piano at the age of 5, got a guitar at 13 and went from there.He was in a rock trio at one point, but soon started crafting together pop-country tunes as a solo artist. As his fame and success built in his native country, he spent more and more time in the U.S., finally relocating in 2015. “The inspiration is huge, and something I definitely couldn’t have gotten just by living in Australia,” Evans felt. “By default, I had to pack up the guitar and my three black t-shirts and get over here,” he told Billboard in 2017.
How did Kelsea Ballerini meet her husband Morgan Evans?
Before they ever got together, Evans was already in love with Ballerini’s music. He kept a copy of an album of hers after interviewing her in Australia, and when friends visited, he said “Let me show you a song from my future wife.”
The two co-hosted Australia’s Country Music Channel Awards in March 2016. At the afterparty, sparks started to fly. "I remember taking that shot and putting it down and looking at him like, 'Oh … he's super-hot,” Ballerini later recalled. “Later that night he leaned over and asked if he could kiss me, like a proper gentleman, and I said yes."
However, there was one problem for Ballerini. She thought he still lived in Australia. “I didn’t know he lived in Nashville,” she said later. “So in my brain, I was like, ‘This guy’s perfect, and I like him so much, but I’m not going to see him again.'”
Finding out that Evans would be stateside was great—at first. “We both were in a place in our lives where we didn’t think we were open to a relationship," she explained to PEOPLE. "So yeah, we tried to self-sabotage. And by the end of it we were like, ‘We just aired out all of our dirty laundry and we still want to be together. This is awesome. We just did two years in two weeks.'"
When did Kelsea Ballerini get married to Morgan Evans?
"I swore I was never going to get married," Ballerini said in 2021. She’d seen her parents’ divorce up close and “for so long, I just viewed their marriage as their divorce. [However,] as I got older, I was able to have conversations with them both about their marriage, pre-divorce and realized that there was beauty there, there was love there at some point. That helped me realize that I could find that."
Evans didn’t make her wait long; they dated less than a year. "This morning, 9 months and 13 days later, he got down on one knee in the kitchen while I was burning pancakes and asked me to marry him,” she posted on social media. “Loving him has been the greatest gift of my life. And now I get to do it for life." Evans had the ring custom-made locally. "I had the ring custom-made with a diamond I picked from a local designer here in Nashville. I wanted it to be classic and beautiful, like her."
There were about 100 people in attendance when the couple made it official in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico on December 2, 2016. Their day was playfully deemed “Happily Evans After” and took place on the beach at the Esperanza Resort. The groom wore a Joseph Abboud tan suit and his barefoot bride wore a Berta gown with a lace bodice. Their first wedding dance wasn’t to either of their songs, but “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri. And of course, the two celebrated with a shot of tequila to remind them of the night they got together.
"Kelsea’s vows were, as you would expect, poetic, sweet—like, mind-blowingly good," Evans shared afterward. "Our officiant was like, 'Hey, Morgan, beat that!' I said mine, and I was going to finish with a few lines of the first song I wrote for her ["Dance with Me"]. I got halfway through them, and she started to lose it, then I started to lose it—so I ended up having to cut it a little bit short!"
Even though they had a fairytale wedding, “We’re not ‘wedding people,'” Ballerini said at the time. “It’s more being married that we’re stoked about.”
Does Kelsea Ballerini have children with Morgan Evans?
“It’s something we’re both stoked to do—someday down the track,” Ballerini said after they were married. Still, there are no immediate plans for children. In fact, Ballerini was quick to shut down even speculation about it in 2020.
A fan wondered if she was seeing Ballerini’s baby bump, and Ballerini responded. “I’m sure you mean well, but it’s incredibly insensitive to ask or assume if another woman is pregnant,” she tweeted. “I’m not, by the way. Just carrying around my organs. If I were, I’d want to share that in my own time when I felt ready,” she added. “Let’s not judge bloat levels on the Internet.” The couple does have a dog, Dibs!
Are Kelsea Ballerina and Morgan Evans still married?
It's no secret that Evans and Ballerini are still crazy about each other. On their wedding anniversary in 2021, Ballerini wrote a short poem for her husband that she shared on Instagram. “You are etched into me / A heart carved on a tree / permanent."
Evans was a little more casual. "Happy Anniversary baaaaaabe!!! 4 years on this crazy, beautiful, winding road together...and I wouldn't wanna be riding it with anybody else! I love you," he captioned the same picture she’d shared.
The two also use their craft to express their feelings. In addition to “Dance with Me” (Ballerini makes an appearance in the recorded version), Evans has also written “Diamonds,” “Country Outta My Girl” and others about his wife. Ballerina has written a few tunes about her husband too, including “Bragger.” “It’s just like fun and quirky and it’s just talking about how hot he is… because that’s an angle I can get behind.” She admits it’s not as easy for her to write love songs about her husband as it seems to be for him. “He’s so good at it,” she told Taste of Country. “People are going to think I’m a terrible wife,” she joked.
The COVID-19 pandemic allowed the two to stay home with each other and “see each other every day and cook together and buy a house together and walk the dog together and just do really normal things that seem small," Ballerini says. "That was a really beautiful thing for our marriage."
It also allowed them to write together for the first time. “It’s been so much fun when we’re just itching to play music, we’ll both just pick up a guitar and start writing…I’m sure down the road we’ll do more songs together.” Evans is glad his wife is a talented musician, since it keeps him on his toes. “It’s funny, I was saying to someone the other day that I used to go into songwriting sessions trying to write the best song in the world,” he said in an interview. “And now I go in going, ‘Jeez I hope I get the best song in our house.’”
According to Ballerini, she and Evans work hard to keep their relationship strong. "We go to couples therapy all the time," she’s shared with PEOPLE. "We approach our relationship so differently, but he shows up—he shows up in every way he needs to.” The star says that today, she has a “healthier idea of marriage," than her parents did. "I don't see it as a fairytale-esque, ride-off-into-the-sunset kind of thing. It's work, but it's worth it."
