Sara Evans revealed Thursday that she and ex-husband Jay Barker are back together.
In the first episode of her new podcast, Diving in Deep with Sara Evans, country star Sara Evans shared that she and Jay Barker have reconciled 2 1/2 years after she filed for divorce.
“We’re so happy now, but I don’t want anyone to think that I’m advocating staying in a relationship where you are ever, in your gut, you know that you need to exit the situation,” she said. “Every woman needs to follow her gut on that and do what is best for her. I believe and I hope that I’ve done that.”
The statement marks the first public statement from the “Born To Fly” since Barker’s arrest in 2022. Barker was charged with felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon allegedly attempting to use his car to hit a car Evan’s was a passenger in. Barker received one year of probation after entering “a best interest” plea to a misdemeanor reckless endangerment charge.
Sara Evans went on to detail the night her husband of 13 years was arrested, saying that the couple had been in a verbal argument earlier that day. That night, Sara accompanied her daughter to a friend’s house for a bonfire. Throughout the night, Barker “blew up” Evans’ phone with text messages, according to the singer. When she returned home, Barker was waiting her for outside of their home.
“It really scared me, and it scared all of us, especially my child that was with me,” she recalled. “So the friend of ours was driving me. We were getting ready to pull into the driveway, and… [Barker] had a verbal altercation with my child, who had never seen that side of him, ever. And it scared the s— out of her.”
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Sara added that Barker backed up his truck “at a very high speed” and her daughter thought he was going to intentionally strike the side of the car where Evan’s was sitting.
“My child thought he was gonna plow our car down, that he was backing up towards our car, and that she was about to watch something horrific, or at the very least, an accident, which would have been his truck hitting my side of the car, where I was in the front seat. She was terrified,” Evans said.
Evans’ daughter responded by calling 9-1-1. Authorities arrived at their home, but Barker had fled the scene. The singer admitted that she had worked hard to hide her husband’s abusive behavior from her children, so the incident shocked and scared her daughter who had never seen that side of him.
Evans attempted to contact Barker to let him know that police were looking for him and had issued a warrant for his arrest. When Barker returned home, he was subsequently arrested and jailed for a night.
“I just felt so ashamed and so stupid, and my child was so mad. But you know that she was standing there thinking, ‘He’s about to hit my mom with a truck.’ I don’t know how close he got honestly, and I don’t know what it looks like to her. But I heard her scream so loud,” Evans said. “I really did not think that he was trying to hit our car. I think he was trying to back up as fast as he could to see who I was in the car with, to see if I was with another man. And my child thought, ‘He’s gonna run into them.’”
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After Barker’s arrest, Evans claims that she stayed home and close to her children as she processed the events that had transpired.
“I was just getting call after call after call after call, and I was like, ‘I cannot believe this is happening to me and my children again. I’ve lost the love of my life,’” she said. “He’s just gorgeous, he’s funny, we have so much in common. We feel the same about everything, raising kids, family structures, politics, religion, everything. We just love each other. We’re best friends.”
A few months later, Barker reached out to Evans and the pair began talking, a move that led to reconciliation.
“A lot of women will judge me and want to judge me. When he said, ‘But you are still my wife,’ I don’t know. I just melted because I thought, ‘I am still your wife, and we can talk if we want to. We’re both adults,’” she shared.
Sara agreed to reconciliation if he agreed to therapy and marriage counseling. Together, Evans and Barker have fought for their marriage, and Barker has fought to regain the trust of his stepchildren – Audrey (19), Olivia (21) and Avery (24).
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Hear Sara Evans talk about her relationship with Jay Barker and their reconciliation in the video below.