Kelsea Ballerini is no stranger to using music to help her heal. The Knoxville native discovered her love of pouring out her heart in music when her own parents split when she was just 12 years old. So it makes sense that when Ballerini was going through her own divorce from her husband, Morgan Evans, in 2022, that she also used music to help her heal.
Videos by Wide Open Country
In 2023, Ballerini released Rolling Up The Welcome Mat, about ending her marriage after five years.
"I was going through what my parents did, and I went back to writing songs simply because I had to," Ballerini tells People. "I was like, 'I have to get it out of me.' My intention putting it out was to show other sides of heartbreak — to have more narrative, especially for women, around life changes and divorce."
It was Rolling Up The Welcome Mat that Ballerini used to share her complicated feelings about her divorce with Chase Stokes. The two began dating in early 2023, after Ballerini sent him the music.
"I just said, 'Hey, I've gone through this thing, and you're going to ask about it,'" she recalls. "So here's a good entry point.'"
Kelsea Ballerin's Healthy Relationship With Chase Stokes
It's not often that two famous people can be in a successful relationship, but Ballerini and Stokes have found a way to make it work.
"I really always romanticized what a relationship, a healthy one, a steady one, looks like," Ballerini tells People. "There's a really interesting thing when you get into a certain season of your relationship where some of the glitter wears off, and you're starting to get really comfortable, and you're having more of the harder conversations. You become a mirror for each other. [Chase] helps me see the best things about myself and vice versa. We also show each other the things that we want to get better at."
Ballerini and Stokes are committed to doing whatever it takes to make their relationship work, including going to therapy.
"I look at love really practically now, and somehow it's my favorite version of it. I didn't really have an example of what a solid relationship looked like in my developmental years," Ballerini tells People, adding that she "learned the hard way."
"Now my version of love that I've found, it's steady and it's human, and we work on it," she continues. "That, to me, honestly, is the sexiest thing."
