Jesse Palmer and his wife, Emely Fardo, have welcomed their first baby.
“Our worlds have been forever changed … She’s finally here,” the couple shared in a joint Instagram post on Wednesday, January 10, revealing their daughter’s name as Ella Reine Palmer. “Our hearts are overflowing with love and gratitude. #Love #Family #Baby #Parents.”
The pair announced in August 2023 that they were expecting. “We’ve been keeping a secret,” they wrote via Instagram at the time alongside photos of Fardo’s baby bump. “Our family is growing and our hearts are so full! This is a dream come true for us and we’re so thrilled to be welcoming our baby girl in January 2024 🎀💕.”
Palmer, 45, and Fardo, 38, began dating in 2017 and got engaged two years later. They were initially set to tie the knot in France in 2020, but they ultimately opted for a quiet ceremony in Connecticut instead due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pair confirmed in October 2021 that they had been married since June 2020.
“We had originally planned a wedding in Provence, France, for summer 2020, which was postponed until summer of 2021 due to the pandemic, but we didn’t want to wait any longer,” Palmer exclusively told Us Weekly in October 2021. “So, we had a small, private and intimate ceremony with close friends who lived in New York City.”
Palmer noted at the time that not much had changed since making things official with Fardo. “I continue to wake up every morning with the woman of my dreams,” he gushed. “The biggest difference is wearing a ring, but I’m getting used to it — and loving it!”
The following year, Palmer and Fardo held a second wedding in France. “So … we did a thing,” he captioned a July 2022 Instagram post. “After canceling our wedding twice due to Covid and then eloping in Connecticut, Emely and I finally tied the knot (again) in front of our immediate families in Provence, France 🇫🇷.”
He added: “Everything was PERFECT. This was the day we had been envisioning for the past 3 years. Such a magical day full of love, tears (I maybe cried … a lot) and gratitude.”
Prior to meeting Fardo, Palmer served as the season 5 Bachelor in 2004. While he did not find lasting love on the show, he told Us in January 2022 that he “learned so much about myself” as the lead.
“I really just sort of went for it and I’m happy — an awful football analogy — [but] I left it all in the field and it helped me later in my life [with] dating as I grew up and I got more mature until finally meeting my wife, Emely,” he continued. “Learning to be vulnerable and opening up and learning to communicate and admitting when my feelings were hurt and talking about how I felt, really brought me a long way. It’s opened up more doors than I ever could have imagined personally, professionally. And I’m really, really happy and very, very fortunate that I was given that opportunity to do that back in 2004.”
Palmer later returned as the host of the Bachelor franchise in 2022 following Chris Harrison’s exit.
