The 'Miss Me More' singer opens up on her life in high school, admitting she didn't have a boyfriend at school because she was more interested in 'older guys.'
- July 5, 2023
AceShowbiz - Kelsea Ballerini tended to romance "older guys" when she was in high school. The 29-year-old country pop star went to Central High School in Knoxville, Tennessee before moving away in her second year to pursue her music career but still returned to see her old classmates for their reunion and joked that there were no former boyfriends to bump into because the men she dated were always a few years her senior.
"So this was the high school that I left after my sophomore year to move to Nashville to do this so I didn't graduate from there, so I was kind of like an honorary Bobcat," she said on "The Kelly Clarkson Show".
"But my best friend graduated from there so I went with her and it was so interesting because we walked into the room and people were having dinner and it was the same people, the same cliques at the tables."
"It was really beautiful because it was actually the 11-year reunion and it was just really cool to see everyone. Everyone is in a different phase of life but everyone is really grown up and it was all just really heartfelt. There wasn't a guy though, because I always dated older guys!"
The "Miss Me More" hitmaker - who divorced from fellow country singer Morgan Evans, 38, in 2022 after five years of marriage and is now dating "Outer Banks" star Chase Stokes, 30 - took to Instagram shortly after the reunion to remember performing her self-penned songs for the first time in the auditorium and declared the experience as the "truest meaning of bittersweet."
She wrote on Instagram, "Technically, I didn't graduate from this high school. I only spent my freshman and sophomore year there before moving to Nashville. But so much life happened here. crushes. music. friendship. heartbreak. insecurity. drive."
"The first time I played a song I wrote for anyone was in this auditorium. There was tragedy and there was magic…and it made leaving this community to go chase down this naive knowingness the truest meaning of bittersweet. So after 13 years of being in Nashville, I decided to go to my reunion to be nostalgic with the people that made me love my hometown like I do. Go bobcats for effing ever."
