Who Is Ethan Slater's Ex-Wife? All About Lilly Jay — and What She's Said About Their Highly Publicized Divorce

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 actor first began dating Jay, a clinical psychologist, in 2012, when they were both sophomores in college — though they'd known each other since high school.

They married in November 2018 and welcomed their first child together, a son whose name they have kept private, in August 2022. However, in the summer of 2023, Slater filed for divorce from Jay as he began dating his Wicked costar Grande, who was going through her own separation from ex-husband Dalton Gomez at the time. It wasn't until September 2024 that Slater and Jay's divorce was finalized.

Related: Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater's Relationship Timeline

Jay made a rare comment on the situation in an essay for The Cut on Dec. 19, writing that she never expected she would get divorced, "especially not just after giving birth to my first child and especially not in the shadow of my husband’s new relationship with a celebrity."

So who is Ethan Slater's ex-wife? Here's everything to know about Lilly Jay and her relationship with the actor.

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

While Slater pursued a career in acting, Jay chose a medical profession: psychology. She majored in law and social thought at Amherst College, graduating in 2014, before studying psychology at Columbia University, per her LinkedIn. In 2020, she graduated with a doctoral degree in clinical psychology from Long Island University.

She has since specialized in perinatal care, working with women pregnant with babies facing fatal or severe conditions at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, per The Cut.

"I loved my life working in a helping profession and being immersed in the details of other people’s stories rather than documenting my own narrative for public consumption," she wrote in her essay.

Jay and Slater were high school sweethearts

Both Jay and Slater attended Georgetown Day School, graduating in 2010. They didn't start dating until they were sophomores in college in 2012, though Jay refers to him as her "high-school sweetheart."

The two were in a long-distance relationship while in college, as Slater attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Jay was a student at Amherst in Massachusetts.

They got married in November 2018

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

Slater celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary in a since-deleted 2022 Instagram post in which he called her his "best friend," writing, "4 years married, 10 years together. And this is easily the best (and most *bizarre*) year yet."

Jay and Slater share a son together

In August 2022, Slater and Jay welcomed their first child together, a baby boy. Slater shared the news in a since-deleted January 2024 Instagram photo of a onesie that read "Wicked Cute," referring to his latest project, Wicked.

Jay suffered from preeclampsia, a life-threatening birth complication, she wrote in The Cut, but once her child was born, she described her family as being "whole."

When he was 2 months old, Jay moved to England for Slater to film Wicked. Less than a year later, the two had split — but she wrote that they value their strong coparenting relationship.

"While our partnership has changed, our parenthood has not," she said. "Both of us fiercely love our son 100 percent of the time, regardless of how our parenting time is divided. As for me, days with my son are sunny."

Their separation went public in July 2023 amid news of Slater and Grande's relationship

Rumors that Grande was dating her Wicked costar began circulating in July 2023, amid news that Slater was separated from his wife. Within a week, the actor filed for divorce from Jay, though a reason was not listed.

As recently as May 2023, Slater had posted a sweet Mother's Day tribute to Jay, writing, "Happy first Mother’s Day to the most loving caring and wonderful mom/person in the world. - from me and this little guy," alongside an image of their baby looking at his shadow. Grande "liked" the post.

Sources provided varying timelines for their relationship, with one telling PEOPLE that the two quickly developed a connection. "It was obvious on the set from early on ... they were very sweet to each other and often seen laughing together," they said. However, they added that the cast and crew interpreted their relationship to be just friendly and "didn’t expect them to end up dating."

A second source added that the two only turned their relationship romantic after they were both separated from their partners, with a third source sharing 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 gave her only public statement at the time in an interview with Page Six, saying she was focused on being "a good mom" while adding, "The story is [Ariana] and Dalton."

“[Ariana’s] the story really. Not a girl’s girl,” Jay told the outlet. “My family is just collateral damage.”

The two finalized their divorce in September 2024.

Jay has spoken about how their split 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 was negatively impacted by the publicity surrounding her divorce. As a therapist, Jay explained she purposely kept her life private, avoiding social media so as to avoid having patients know too much about her.

Since Slater had a public-facing career, the two had multiple conversations in their relationship about how to balance that.

"We puzzled through this predicament on walks, over pizza, in our apartment and excitedly concocted rules of engagement of how and what he would share about our lives together," she wrote. "It was a tenuous balance — my profession, which requires privacy, and his, which is measured in applause — but it worked well while life was unfolding according to our plans."

However, after the divorce made headlines, Jay felt increased attention on her. "In the countless hours I spend rocking my son to sleep, pushing his stroller, marveling at his sweaty little hands grasping a crayon, I work diligently on my private project of accepting the sudden public downfall of my marriage," 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 "dissolved without explanation after yet another tabloid news cycle" and a patient scheduled for a first appointment "seemingly vanished," but she hoped to use the situation as an opportunity for a "point of connection rather than a clinical liability."

Read the original article on People