Sara Evans and Jay Barker Have Reconciled After Divorce, Arrest

Sara Evans and her estranged husband, Jay Barker, are back together after a few tumultuous years.

The country singer filled fans in on the status of her relationship on Thursday (March 21) during the debut episode of her new podcast, Diving in Deep With Sara Evans.

“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 shares.

“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.”

Are Sara Evans and Jay Barker Divorced?

The “Suds in the Bucket” singer filed for divorce from Barker in Aug. 2021 after 13 years of marriage. The couple initially separated in April of that year, but official documents were not drafted until months later.

Things turned especially sour between the two in Jan. 2022, when Barker was arrested after he allegedly tried to ram his car into another car that Evans was riding in. The former college football player was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Evans’ new podcast episode is the first time she has spoken about that event.

“It really scared me, and it scared all of us, especially my child that was with me,” she explains. “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–t out of her.”

“Then he jumped in his truck, and he [was] sort of backing up at a very high speed,” she continues.

“I knew Jay, so I didn’t feel the same way that my child felt. 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.”

How Jay Barker’s Attempted Assault Affected Sara Evans

Prior to Barker’s arrest, Evans’ children didn’t know about his abusive behavior toward their mother. That moment changed everything.

“I just felt so ashamed and so stupid, and my child was so mad,” Evans recounts. “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.”

“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 says of the divorce.

“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.”

Did Sara Evans and Jay Barker Get Back Together?

It was several months before Evans would even entertain a conversation with Barker.

He sent her a text to her while she was on tour which read: “Everybody says that I shouldn’t contact you, but you are still my wife.”

“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 admits.

“So I texted him back and I think I just said something short and sweet like, ‘How are you? I’m on the road’ and we sort of tiptoed back to each other.”

Prior to the podcast debut, Evans revealed in an interview with the Bobby Bones Show that she and Barker have been in therapy and are also living together again.

“We’ve been in therapy for a year and a half and we’ve been back together living together since November,” she says, before conceding, “So, we’ll be in therapy until we die.”