Morgan Evans made his red carpet debut with new girlfriend Laci Kay Booth at the 2025 CMA Awards, while his ex-wife, Kelsea Ballerini, was among the night’s performers.
Evans, 40, was spotted packing on the PDA with Booth, 30, on the red carpet at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on Wednesday, November 19, as they posed for photos, per a TikTok video shared by People.
For the occasion, the country crooner wore a stylish black leather jacket, black pants and a silk white blouse with the top buttons undone, showing off his chest. Booth, meanwhile, wore a burgundy red lace gown with matching fingerless gloves and stockings. She completed the look by styling her red hair in curls.
The couple’s first red carpet outing comes several months after Booth appeared to confirm their relationship during a joint performance at the Live in the Vineyard Goes Country festival in Napa Valley, California, back in April.
Evans joined Booth onstage to perform her song “Daddy’s Mugshot,” which the pair cowrote, per footage posted on Instagram at the time. Booth introduced Evans as her “boyfriend” and “hot guitar player,” adding, “I’m in love with him.”
While Evans and Booth looked loved up on the red carpet, Ballerini, 32, took to the CMAs stage with an emotional rendition of her new song, “I Sit in Parks,” on which she appears to get candid about her desire to experience motherhood and the demands of her career.
“So I sit in parks, sunglasses dark and I / Hit the vape, hallucinate, a nursery with Noah’s Ark,” Ballerini sings. “They lay on a blanket and, goddamnit, he loves her / I wonder if she wants my freedom like I wanna be a mother / But Rolling Stone says I’m on the right road / So I refill my Lexapro, thinkin’.”
The “Cowboys Cry Too” singer began dating Evans in 2016 and they became engaged that December. The couple wed in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in December 2017, however, they announced their separation less than five years later in August 2022. Their divorce was finalized in November 2022.
“I think when there’s a big life decision like that, it’s not a sudden one,” Ballerini said of the split during an October 2022 appearance on CBS Mornings. “And there’s a lot that happens before that becomes public. So, I’m on my, like, active healing journey.”
She added, “It’s not, like, volatile [between us], it just didn’t work and that sometimes is, like, a difficult narrative to get your head around when you’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh. This is a good person. And I’m a good person. And this is just no longer good anymore.’”
Following her divorce, Ballerini moved on with Outer Banks actor Chase Stokes, with whom she was first linked in January 2023.
Ballerini and Stokes, 33, called it quits in September after two years of dating, but earlier this month, a source exclusively told Us Weekly that the pair “are back together.”
“They really picked up where they left off,” the source said, adding: “Kelsea wanted to give it another chance and missed Chase a lot.”
For his part, Stokes “never wanted the breakup,” the source said. “[He] always felt there was something between them and believed they just needed time to cool off and figure things out.”
