Jason Aldean’s first wife spoke to reporters exactly once, in 2012, and stayed silent even in July 2026, when news broke that their daughter had secretly married.
Jessica Ussery is usually called Jessica Aldean. She never legally used that name. Jason Aldean’s real surname is Williams, a name he set aside for the stage before his career took off, and it’s the name that appears on the 2013 divorce filing: Jason Williams and Jessica Ussery Williams.
Jason and Jessica met as teenagers near Macon, Georgia, before he had any kind of music career. They married on August 4, 2001. She was 21, he was 24. Their daughters, Keeley and Kendyl, were born in 2003 and 2007.
| Born | October 18, 1979, in Georgia |
| Married Jason Aldean | August 4, 2001 |
| Filed for divorce | April 26, 2013 |
| Children | Keeley Williams, born 2003, and Kendyl Williams, born 2007 |
| Remarried | Jake Marlin, October 17, 2015 |
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A charity built together, credited to one person
In 2006, Jason and Jessica started an annual concert to raise money for breast cancer research, called Concert for the Cure. It benefited Susan G. Komen and began after a family friend, Melissa Morstad, died of the disease at 30.
By late 2012, coverage of the concert described Jessica as the one who organized it. That year’s show, in Dallas, brought in just over $500,000.
The concert kept going after the divorce and has since raised close to four million dollars. Every account of it published since 2013, on Jason’s own website and on Wikipedia, credits him alone.
The interview, and what came apart around it
On November 15, 2012, seven weeks after photos surfaced of Jason kissing another woman at a bar, he and Jessica appeared together on CBS This Morning. The segment was booked to talk through that year’s Concert for the Cure total. During it, Jessica explained that Melissa Morstad had been married to her cousin, which is how she and Jason had come to know her.
Then the anchors asked about the other woman. Jason told them every long marriage has its problems.
“I would love to hear their story,” Jessica said.
It remains the only interview she has given on the record.
That appearance sat in the middle of a longer unraveling. The couple had walked the CMA Awards red carpet together two weeks earlier, on November 1. The following month, Jason told People magazine the affair was behind them and that the two of them were looking forward to a good year. By April 2013, he walked the Academy of Country Music Awards carpet alone. On April 26, he filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. They would have reached twelve years of marriage that August. Their daughters were 10 and 5 at the time.
Her life since the divorce
Jessica married Jake Marlin, an electrical lineman, on October 17, 2015, about seven months after Jason married Brittany Kerr. Both brought children from earlier relationships into the marriage, and the two of them have none together. The net worth figures that circulate for her online range from one million dollars to sixteen million, and none of them cite an actual source.
In July 2026, Jason was a guest on the radio show Country Countdown USA and mentioned that Keeley, his and Jessica’s older daughter, had graduated college and gotten married the year before. Asked if he was ready to be a grandfather, he said he’d told her to slow down, that it would happen when the time was right. He also said Kendyl, their younger daughter, was starting college that fall. Every outlet that picked up the story, People, Yahoo, and others, quoted Jason. The story ran entirely in his words.
The same two words, years apart
In 2011, Jason called Jessica his best friend and said she handled the parts of his career he didn’t want to deal with. In April 2026, describing his marriage to Brittany, he used nearly the same words: best friends, and a great business minded person.
