Who is Ethan Slater’s ex-wife? All about Lilly Jay

Before his relationship with Ariana Grande, Ethan Slater was married to his high school sweetheart, Lilly Jay, for five years.

The SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical The actor began dating Jay, a clinical psychologist, in 2012 when they were both sophomores – even though they had known each other since high school.

They married in November 2018 and had their first child together, a son whose name they have kept secret, in August 2022. However, in the summer of 2023, Slater filed for divorce from Jay as he began dating his Evil Costar Grande, who was also separating from her ex-husband Dalton Gomez at the time. Slater and Jay’s divorce was not finalized until September 2024.

Jay made a rare comment on the situation in an essay The cut On December 19, she wrote that she never expected she would get a divorce, “especially not right after the birth of my first child and certainly not in the shadow of my husband’s new relationship with a celebrity.”

So who is Ethan Slater’s ex-wife? Here you can find out everything about Lilly Jay and her relationship with the actor.

She is a clinical psychologist specializing in pregnancy and postpartum mental health

While Slater pursued an acting career, Jay chose a medical career: psychology. According to LinkedIn, she studied law and social thought at Amherst College and graduated in 2014 before studying psychology at Columbia University. In 2020, she graduated from Long Island University with a doctorate in clinical psychology.

Since then, she has specialized in perinatal care, working at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with women who have pregnant babies who have terminal or serious medical conditions The cut.

“I loved working in a helping profession and delving into the details of other people’s stories rather than documenting my own narrative for the public,” she wrote in her essay.

Jay and Slater were high school sweethearts

Both Jay and Slater attended Georgetown Day School and graduated in 2010. They didn’t start dating until they were sophomores in college in 2012, although Jay refers to him as her “high school sweetheart.”

The two had a long-distance relationship during college, as Slater attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, and Jay was a student at Amherst in Massachusetts.

They got married in November 2018

After six years of dating, Slater and Jay married in November 2018.

Slater celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary in a now-deleted Instagram post from 2022, in which he referred to her as his “best friend” and wrote: “4 years married, 10 years together. And this is easily the best (and most *bizarre*) year yet.”

Jay and Slater have a son together

In August 2022, Slater and Jay welcomed their first child together, a baby boy. Slater shared the news in a now-deleted Instagram photo from January 2024, which featured a onesie that said “Wicked Cute” and referenced his latest project: Evil.

Jay suffered from preeclampsia, a life-threatening birth complication, she wrote The cutbut when her child was born, she described her family as “whole.”

When he was two months old, Jay moved to England to film Slater Evil. Less than a year later, the two had separated – but she wrote that they valued their strong relationship as co-parents.

“While our partnership has changed, our parenting has not,” she said. “We both love our son 100 percent, regardless of how our parenting time is divided. As far as I’m concerned, the days with my son are sunny.”

Their split was made public in July 2023 when news of Slater and Grande’s relationship broke

Rumors that Grande was dating her Evil Costar began making the rounds in July 2023 when it was announced that Slater was separated from his wife. Within a week, the actor filed for divorce from Jay, but no reason was given.

As recently as May 2023, Slater posted a sweet Mother’s Day tribute to Jay and wrote alongside a picture: “Happy first Mother’s Day to the most loving, caring and wonderful mother/person in the world. – of me and this little guy.” of her baby looking at his shadow. Grande liked the post.

Sources gave different timelines for their relationship, with one telling PEOPLE that the two quickly developed a connection. “It was clear early on set that they were very nice to each other and were often seen laughing together,” they said. However, they added that the cast and crew interpreted their relationship as merely friendly and “didn’t expect them to end up dating.”

A second source added that the pair’s relationship only became romantic when they were both separated from their partners. A third source shared that Jay was “devastated.”

“They were together for so long; they met when they were in high school,” they said. “They were inseparable.”

Within a week of Slater’s filing, Jay made her only public statement at the time in an interview with Page Six, She said she focused on being “a good mother,” adding, “The story is (Ariana) and Dalton.”

“(Ariana’s) the story really. “Not a girl for girls,” Jay told the outlet. “My family is just collateral damage.”

The two finalized their divorce in September 2024.

Jay has spoken about how their breakup affected her career

A year and a half later, Jay spoke out again for the first time in a personal essay, writing that her career had been negatively affected by the publicity surrounding her divorce. As a therapist, Jay explained that she intentionally kept her life private and avoided social media to prevent patients from knowing too much about her.

Since Slater had a career in the public eye, the two had several conversations in their relationship about how to balance it.

“We thought about this predicament on walks, over pizza, in our apartment, and excitedly concocted rules of conduct for how and what he would say about our life together,” she wrote. “It was a difficult balance – my job, which requires privacy, and his job, which is measured in applause – but it worked well while life went according to our plans.”

However, after the divorce made headlines, Jay sensed increased attention being paid to her. “In the countless hours I spend rocking my son to sleep, pushing his stroller, and marveling at his sweaty little hands gripping a crayon, I am diligently working on my private project, the sudden public demise of my marriage to accept,” she wrote. “This, I tell myself, is nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide.”

Jay added that her career was also negatively affected, as a job offer was “terminated without explanation after another tabloid news cycle” and a patient scheduled for an initial appointment “seemed to have disappeared,” but she hoped that Situation as an opportunity for a “point of contact and no clinical burden.”