Nearly one year after announcing their separation, AJ McLean and wife Rochelle McLean are calling it quits for good.
The Backstreet Boys singer, 45, shared the split news via Instagram on Monday, January 1, simply captioning the reveal with a crying emoji.
“As you all know we have been separated for over a year now,” read the accompanying statement. “While we have hoped for reconciliation we have decided to officially end our marriage. It is with deep love and respect that we have made this decision.”
The message, which was signed by both AJ and Rochelle, 42, concluded: “Our focus now is moving forward in the healthiest possible way with friendship and coparenting our girls at the forefront of this next chapter. We appreciate your kindness respect and privacy at this time.”
Rochelle shared the same statement via her own Instagram account on Monday, adding a black heart emoji in the caption.
The former couple began dating in March 2009, and AJ proposed after 10 months during a trip to Las Vegas. The pair tied the knot in a goth-themed wedding ceremony in Beverly Hills in December 2011.
AJ and Rochelle went on to welcome Elliott and Lyric in 2012 and 2017, respectively.
AJ and Rochelle previously hit a rough patch after 11 years of marriage in March 2023. “Marriage is hard, but worth it. We have mutually decided to separate temporarily to work on ourselves, and on our marriage with the hope of building a stronger future,” the pair noted in a joint statement to Us Weekly.
At the time, the twosome asserted that their aim was “to come back together and continue to nurture our love for one another, and our family,” adding, “We ask for respect and privacy at this time. Separation is hard enough without the commentary, please be kind and remember there are children involved.”
Despite their breakup, AJ remained close with Rochelle as they continued to raise their children. “We still live separately, but we are in couples therapy. We are in individual therapy. We talk every day. We are spending more time together,” he explained on a November 2023 episode of Cheryl Burke‘s “Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans” podcast. “We just have to rebuild something that was never there from the beginning.”
AJ confessed that both he and Rochelle faced personal challenges at the beginning of their romance, noting that his battle with substance abuse took a toll on their relationship. (He celebrated two years of sobriety last fall.)
“I came with baggage, she came with baggage. She had trauma, I had trauma. I wasn’t sober or even ready to get sober, she was dealing with her own s–t,” he continued. “It was just a constant push-pull. She would sweep her feelings under the rug, I would do the same thing or I’d dive into a bottle. Now, it’s taken this time apart for us to really do some serious growing and understanding and listening.”
