Congratulations to Sara Evans! The country singer’s 20-year-old daughter Audrey is pregnant, making Sara a grandmother for the first time later this year. The father is Audrey’s longtime boyfriend, John Headley.
Audrey announced the news on social media, sharing a few photos.
“A BABY! How blessed are we,” Audrey writes. “Welcoming our tiny angel this October. We’re so excited to meet you.. thank you Jesus!”
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Sara is understandably excited to take on her new role later this year.
“Words cannot express how excited and happy I am for Audrey and John!” Sara tells People. “I am already so in love with my grandchild and can’t wait to meet the little angel! God is so amazing!”
Audrey’s big sister, 21-year-old Olivia, also shares her thoughts on becoming an aunt.
“I could not be more excited about the news,” she says. “I’m so happy to have the opportunity to love, spoil, and cherish this baby, my soon-to-be new bestie.”
Audrey is eager to become a first-time mother this fall.
“We are beyond joyful and deeply grateful to God for this incredible blessing,” Audrey says. “I am honored to step into motherhood and embrace everything that comes with it. We feel so lucky to have such a tight-knit family who we know will surround us — John, the baby, and me — with endless love and support.”
Audrey was in the audience, along with her brother and sister, when Sara was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2023.
“It’s rare to see a childhood dream reach fruition [in this manner],” Sara said at the time (via The Tennessean). “I went from being a little girl in Missouri performing songs with lyrics I didn’t understand with my two brothers and older musicians in small, strange bars to God finding the perfect time for me to ride the wave of where my career and life are right now.”
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All three of Sara’s children are from her first husband, Craig Schelske. The couple divorced in 2007. In 2008, Evans married Jay Barker, a former University of Alabama quarterback. Sara and Jay separated in 2021. In 2022, he was charged with aggravated assault, after allegedly trying to run Sara over with his car. Evans shared details of that night on her podcast, Diving in Deep with Sara Evans.
“It really scared me, and it scared all of us, especially my child that was with me,” Sara recalls. “So the friend of ours was driving me. We were getting ready to pull into the driveway, and… [Jay] had a verbal altercation with my child, who had never seen that side of him, ever. And it scared the s— 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.”
Fortunately, Jay got help, and the two later reconciled, after Jay reached out to Sara while they were separated, texting her saying, ““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,” Sara admits. “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.’ 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.”
Photo Credit: Chris Hollo