Ethan Slater‘s ex-wife, Lilly Jay, found herself thrust into the spotlight after his alleged 2023 affair with Wicked co-star Ariana Grande and has been navigating a semi-public life ever since.
“I am actively trying to figure out what it means to have any degree of a voice, especially one that I sort of stumbled into and didn’t really ask for,” Jay, a psychologist focused on perinatal mental health, told Glamour in May.
Slater and Jay were married for five years actor officially filed for divorce on July 26, 2023, after People reported that he “recently” started dating his Wicked co-star Grande. This came a week after sources also began to report that Grande separated from her husband of two years, Dalton Gomez, back in January of that year.
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However, speculation soon brewed that the timeline being presented was blurrier than what really happened, leading to rumors of an affair between Slater and Grande.
Jay opened up about their divorce for the first time to The Cut on Dec. 19, 2024. In a lengthy essay, Jay reflected on her journey to “accepting the sudden public downfall of my marriage,” her thoughts on her ex-husband’s “relationship with a celebrity,” and her feelings about the Wicked press tour.
For all the details on Jay, her marriage to Slater, their breakup, and what went down after the alleged affair, keep reading.
All About Ethan Slater’s Ex-Wife, Lilly Jay
Jay is a clinical psychologist who was married to Slater from 2018 until their 2023 divorce. Slater and Jay were high school sweethearts who started dating in 2013 after several years of friendship. The couple shares a son who was born in 2022.
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Ethan Slater & Lilly Jay
Jason Smith/Everett Collection.
Jay Is a Clinical Psychologist
Jay is a clinical psychologist specializing in perinatal mental health and child development. Jay studied at Amherst College and serves on the medical board of a science-backed parenting platform, Riley, an app designed to aid new parents.
While Jay has become more vocal about advocating for maternal rights, she primarily works privately with patients. “I do feel deeply, deeply committed to the private work of being a psychologist, and I quite like that,” she told Glamour in May.
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Jay opened up about her work to The Cut, explaining that, while pregnant with her son, “I worked as a psychologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, supporting women pregnant with babies facing severe or fatal diseases.”
Jay has also done advocacy work with the It’s On Us initiative, an organization that provides awareness about sexual assault and encourages bystanders to intervene. In 2014, she even gave a speech at the White House, raising awareness for campus sexual assault. Then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden were both in attendance.
“When nonsurvivors step up and say, ‘I don’t need to be hurt to care about assault,’ they give survivors permission to move our hearts from the edge of our sleeves back to where they belong,” Jay said in her speech, per Bust. “Hearing my friends, family, and professors say, ‘You don’t need to stay hurt to convince us to care,’ freed me. That’s when I got back my college experience.”
Jay & Slater Co-Parent a Son
Jay and Slater welcomed a son together in 2022, a year before their split.
In September, sources spotted Slater and Jay out and about together with their son. “He looked really happy, just pushing the stroller like any other parent. Just a few steps ahead was a woman who looked exactly like his ex, Jay, helping a little kid ride in one of those toy wagons,” an eyewitness said
In her essay in The Cut, Jay spoke about being a single parent after her divorce. “I have come to believe that in the absence of the life I planned with my high-school sweetheart, a lifetime of sweetness is waiting for me and my child,” she wrote.
“While our partnership has changed, our parenthood has not. Both of us fiercely love our son 100 percent of the time, regardless of how our parenting time is divided,” she wrote.
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In an October 2024 interview with GQ, Slater called being a dad the “best thing in the world” but expressed his desire to keep his son, whose name has not been revealed publicly, private.
“It’s been an interesting thing to navigate as a new parent. There’s nothing I want to do more than just show you pictures and talk about him because he’s the best and the light of my life. But I also want to give him the opportunity to meet the world on his own terms,” Slater said.
Slater & Jay Split in 2023 Amid His Romance With Ariana Grande
Grande and Slater met while working on Wicked together, which began filming in December 2022. According to a July 2023 TMZ report, Grande separated from her husband, Gomez, in January 2023.
In August of that year, sources told the Daily Mail that Slater and Grande were seen packing on the PDA as early as March. “They were seen making out at a pub in Hampstead, and they were all over each other at Michelle Yeoh’s Oscar party [in March],” the source said.
“They were sloppy on set,” the insider added. “They were seen being all over each other while he was still supposedly happily married to Lilly.”
Jay and Slater were still gushing about each other on social media around this time. In May 2023, Slater labeled Jay “the most loving, caring, and wonderful mom/person in the world” in a Mother’s Day Instagram post. On June 1, Jay posted a tribute to Slater for his birthday. “Happy birthday to my incredible husband,” she wrote in a post on Facebook. “Here’s to a lifetime of love and more adventures ahead.”
Though some sources claim Slater and Grande were both separated by the time they started dating, an Us Weekly source said, “Ethan sat Lilly down a few days before the news broke about him and Ariana and said that he wanted a divorce. Lilly never saw it coming!”
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Ethan Slater & Ariana Grande at the Wicked Los Angeles Premiere at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on November 9, 2024, in Los Angeles, California.
Gilbert Flores
What Has Ethan Slater’s Ex-Wife Said About Ariana Grande?
Following Slater’s request for a divorce, Jay spoke out for the first time to address the affair rumors. “[Ariana’s] the story, really. Not a girl’s girl,” Jay told Page Six on July 27, 2023. “My family is just collateral damage.”
“I am focused on rebuilding a life for our son and rebuilding a life for him,” Jay told Daily Mail that same day. “This is what I am trying to do, and this is my only focus.”
In her December essay in The Cut, Jay did not address the affair directly but confirmed that she moved to London with Slater “to support his career” and was too preoccupied with motherhood to “understand the growing distance between us.”
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Grande appeared to deny the media’s characterization of her and Slater’s romance during a February 2024 appearance on The Zach Sang Show. “I feel like we don’t need to go into any specifics, but, of course, there’s like an insatiable frustration, inexplicable, hellish feeling with watching people misunderstand the people you love, and you and anything,” Grande said.
She reiterated a similar sentiment in a September interview with Vanity Fair. “There couldn’t be a less accurate depiction of a human being than the one that the tabloids spread about him,” Grande said of Slater, but added that she “will never go into certain details.”
Jay Alluded To Struggling With Slater & Grande’s Wicked Press
In her essay for The Cut, Jay alluded to having a hard time watching Slater and Grande promote Wicked.
“As for me, days with my son are sunny. Days when I can’t escape the promotion of a movie associated with the saddest days of my life are darker,” she wrote.
Slater also previously spoke about struggling with public attention on his relationship with Grande and his divorce from Jay. “I think there was something that was really difficult about things in your private life being commented on and looked at by the public,” he told GQ in October 2024.
“There were a lot of big changes in private lives that were really happening, so it’s really hard to see people who don’t know anything about what’s happening commenting on it and speculating, and then getting things wrong about the people you love. So just to address that part of it, that feels really hard.”
Before you go, click here to see all the celebrity couples who have stayed together after cheating scandals. 
