They first connected while she was in prison, eventually marrying behind bars. But just three months after she was released, they announced their divorce. The real reason why Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her husband Ryan Anderson split can be found very subtly in her statement.
The victim of Munchausen Syndrome by proxy—a rare form of abuse in which a caregiver exaggerates or induces illness in a person under their care to gain sympathy and attention—Blanchard murdered her mother to escape years of abuse and plead guilty to second-degree murder and served a 10-year prison sentence; released on December 28, 2023.
Blanchard’s future husband, Ryan Scott Anderson, sent her a letter in 2020 and said that he never expected to hear back from her, but by May 2020, they were regularly corresponding. In 2022, Anderson and Blanchard obtained a marriage license in Chillicothe, Missouri. It wouldn’t last, however, because People discovered the couple split on March 28, 2024. Here’s why Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her husband Ryan Anderson split.
Why did Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her husband Ryan Anderson split?
A very subtle detail in Gypsy Rose’s divorce post hints that the couple grew apart. “People have been asking what is going on in my life. Unfortunately my husband and I are going through a separation and I moved in with my parents home down the bayou,” she wrote in a statement obtained by People from her private Facebook account. “I have the support of my family and friends to help guide me through this. I am learning to listen to my heart. Right now I need time to let myself find… who I am.”
In an interview with People in December 2023, Blanchard said she planned to marry the Louisiana middle school special education teacher again after her release so they could enjoy festivities with their loved ones.
“We do plan on having a reception/redo wedding with all of our family and our friends and the dress and the cake and everything because we deserve that. I deserve that. He deserves that,” she said. “Our prison wedding was just something to where we can make our vows to each other. It was something that meant something to us. And I think the party is kind of for everybody else and us, but mostly for everybody else.”
They did plan to have kids one day but telling them about her mother’s murder will be a challenge. “We’re in love,” says Gypsy. But also, “It’s hard because I’m going into a new life and I’m newly married, and I’m going to have kids one day, and I’m going to have to explain to my kids why their grandmother on mommy’s side isn’t around. And that’s going to be a really hard conversation.”
How did Gypsy Rose Blanchard meet her husband?
Blanchard’s husband sent her a letter in 2020, thanks in part to a co-worker. It was right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic and after watching Tiger King, his co-worker told Anderson she wanted to write to Joe Exotic. “I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, if you write him, I’ll write Gypsy Rose Blanchard,’” Anderson explained to People ahead of Blanchard’s release.
“And I had watched her documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest, like three years before that. And then The Act had came out and I’ve never watched The Act, but I remember my friends talking about The Act and I was like, I’ll watch the documentary again. So it was kind of fresh on my mind.”
He said that he never expected to hear back from her, but by May 2020, they were regularly corresponding. A year after they started talking, they met for the first time. “We met in 2020 when the pandemic was really, really strong, and I had a lot of emotional ups and downs because of COVID,” Blanchard told People. “Unfortunately, it put the prison in a position to where it restricted our freedom even more … So Ryan has seen me through some really good times, some really hard times.”
She added, “I would say that he is probably the most compassionate soul that I’ve ever met, and the most patient, God knows, he’s so patient with me because I could be a little bit of a lot to handle. I could be a handful, an emotional handful.”
Anderson and Blanchard obtained a marriage license in Chillicothe, Missouri, on June 27, 2022. A month later, on July 21, 2022, the two tied the knot in a small prison ceremony with no guests.
