MKR divorce shock
Jennifer Evans has left her husband, blaming the reality show for their split
Her husband nicknamed her the “princess”, but life has been anything but an easy ride for reality TV villain Jennifer Evans since she won My Kitchen Rules with Leigh Sexton four years ago.
The bubbly home cook from Adelaide was so traumatised by internet bullies after she won, she fled to Bangkok to start a new life with her husband, Wayne Ormond, and their boys, Harlow, four, and Hudson, two.
She returned to Australia 18 months ago to attempt a fresh start in Tasmania with professional punter Wayne, but Jen, 30, has now called it quits on their marriage, saying it never recovered from the battering she got after the show.
“I really struggled after MKR,” she says. “It definitely had something to do with the failure of our marriage because I hated myself after the show and began to doubt everything I did, which really frustrated Wayne, because he’s my biggest fan.”
Jen, who is still building her supermarket curry brand Jen’s Kitchen with Wayne, admits her marriage was far from perfect even before MKR, revealing she tried to call it off three days before the couple wed in Adelaide in 2011.
“I started seeing that he didn’t care as much as me about things in general in life, and I realised it was probably not the best time for us to marry,” she says.
But Jen says she succumbed to pressure to walk down the aisle despite her doubts.
Different priorities
“He’s a professional horse racing person and he was still putting his bets on the morning of the wedding, and that really annoyed me,” says Jen, adding the honeymoon to Mexico and New York wasn’t ideal either.
“When he saw cheap champagne and cocktails, he couldn’t help himself and drank too much… He named me princess but I now say if you want to call me princess, then start treating me like one!”
Admitting he has made mistakes in their marriage, Wayne says he still loves Jen and hopes to win her back.
“I probably haven’t got my priorities 100 per cent right and have suffered the consequences, but at the end of the day we have two kids and I’m optimistic that we can turn things around and have a happy future,” he says. “I still very much love Jen – she’s my princess and I will always love her.”