Kelsea Ballerini kicked off the 2023 CMT Music Awards with a dedication to the victims of the Nashville faculty taking pictures.
The nation music star, 29, stated, “On March 27, 2023, three nine-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and Hallie Scruggs together with Dr. Katherine Koonce, Cynthia Peak, Mike Hill walked into the Covenant faculty and didn’t stroll out.”
Ballerini turned emotional earlier than including, “The group of sorrow over this and the 130 mass shootings within the US this 12 months alone stretches from coast to coast. I needed to personally arise right here and share this second as a result of on August 21, 2008 I watched Ryan McDonald, my 15-year-old classmate at Central Excessive College lose his life to a gun in our cafeteria.”
The CMT host concluded, “Tonight’s broadcast is devoted to the ever rising listing of households, pals, survivors, witnesses and responders whose lives proceed to perpetually be modified by gun violence. I pray deeply that the closeness in the neighborhood that we really feel by the following few hours of music can quickly flip into motion, like actual motion, that strikes us ahead collectively to create change for the protection of our youngsters and or family members.”
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Kelsea Ballerini started the 2023 CMT Music Awards with a dedication to the victims of the Nashville faculty taking pictures. (Picture by Emma McIntyre)
Simply earlier than taking the stage on the nation music award present, Ballerini and Chase Stokes, 30, made their crimson carpet debut, 5 months after her divorce from Morgan Evans.
The nation music star surprised in a grey, corseted robe as she clung to the “Outer Banks” star.
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Stokes stored his look informal, maintaining a blue button-up shirt open, exposing a white t-shirt and black pants.
Ballerini lately took to social media to defend her relationship with the actor, claiming it isn’t a PR stunt.
Chase Stokes and Kelsea Ballerini made their crimson carpet debut on the 2023 CMT Awards. (Picture by Emma McIntyre)
“Idk appears staged. In all probability PR,” she wrote beneath a photograph of her sitting on Stokes’ lap, which the actor had posted. She tacked on an upside-down smiley face emoji.
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After they had been noticed out collectively on a number of events, Ballerini confirmed her relationship with Stokes in February whereas on the “Name Her Daddy” podcast.
The couple first sparked romance rumors when Stokes posted a carousel of images to Instagram in January, with one that includes Ballerini.
Kelsea Ballerini confirmed her relationship with “Outer Banks” star Chase Stokes in February. (Getty Photos)
The image confirmed Ballerini and Stokes cuddled up of their seats on the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. Though their backs had been to the digicam, Stokes tagged the singer, so there was no confusion as to who he was sitting with. Ballerini commented on the submit saying, “go vols” together with an emoji of a monkey masking its eyes.
The singer-songwriter finalized her divorce from her husband, Morgan Evans, in November.
On an episode of the “Inform Me About It With Jade Iovine” podcast in December, Ballerini defended her determination to separate.
Morgan Evans and Kelsea Ballerini finalized their divorce in November. (John Shearer)
The “Half of my Hometown” singer stated she’s “actually intuitive and in tune” with herself and knew that it was time to get divorced.
“For some time, you are proper, it was type of like, ‘OK, that is only a new part of a relationship,’ as a result of relationships undergo seasons, proper? And it is not at all times going to be rainbows and butterflies. That is simply not it,” Ballerini defined. “For a very long time, I used to be like, ‘Oh that is simply… the glitter wears off. That is what occurs.’ And you then get right into a part the place you anticipate it to come back again. After which typically it would not.”
“However on the finish of the day, it’s such a disservice and a dishonoring of your self if you realize one thing shouldn’t be proper and also you keep,” she added.
Kelsea Ballerini attends the 2023 CMT Music Awards on Sunday. (Picture by Emma McIntyre)
Ballerini and Evans wed in 2017. After almost 5 years of marriage, the 2 introduced their separation in August on Instagram. Ballerini and Evans initially met in 2016 whereas internet hosting the CMC Music Awards in Australia.
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Shortly after Evans and Ballerini determined to divorce, he wrote the track “Over for You” to assist him course of his feelings and heartbreak. He ended up releasing the track after taking part in it for an viewers in Australia.
“All my social media, and the conversations I began having with folks turned from ‘Nice present man’ or ‘Come again to Kentucky quickly’ to stuff like, ‘Thanks for writing the track, it’s getting me by my divorce,’ or ‘Thanks for placing into phrases what I felt once I went by this seven years in the past,’ stuff like that,” Evans defined to Fox Information Digital.
Kelsea Ballerini and Morgan Evans wed in 2017. (Taylor Hill)
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“When issues began occurring like that, I knew it was one thing I needed to file correctly and share, and that is what we did. And I am actually happy with the track.”
Fox Information Digital’s Lauryn Overhultz contributed to this report.
