Dropping a bombshell. Karamo Brown and his fiancé, Ian Jordan, quietly called it quits on their 10-year relationship earlier this year.
The Queer Eye star, 39, opened up about their split during his appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Friday, September 25.
“It was postponed [their wedding] because of the pandemic, but now it’s actually postponed officially, because my fiancé and I, we were together for 10 years, and we broke up about three and a half months ago,” he told guest host Stephen “tWitch” Boss. “We were distracted by so much — with the kids, and our careers — that during that time, I had to really say, ‘How is our communication? How are other parts of our lives? Are we growing in the same place?'”
Brown said that he and the director, 48, had to be thoughtful about their breakup because they had built a life together. The pair tried counseling but ultimately decided to split.
“We’re not 20 anymore, so it wasn’t just, ‘Oh, I’m not going to text you anymore’ — it was like, we have a family and a home,” he said. “How do we separate this? And it was hard. We went to virtual counseling, we did a lot of things. But eventually, I was like, ‘This is a moment where I need to decide, is my happiness important?’ And once I made that decision, I said, you know, ‘We are going to have to break up.'”
The Real World alum clarified there was “no cheating” involved and that he and Jordan are still “good friends.”
Brown added, “It’s very nice when it’s like, ‘I still love you and support you.’ I want him to be happy, he wants me to be happy. But yeah, no more wedding, so if y’all got any friends. I’m lying. I’m not ready to move on that quick. I’m not ready.”
The Netflix star — who is the father of sons Jason, 23, and Chris, 20 — proposed to Jordan at his birthday party in May 2018. Brown’s Queer Eye costars Bobby Berk, Antoni Porowski, Jonathan Van Ness and Tan France were also in attendance.
The Texas native told Us Weekly in February that Jordan had two panic attacks while wedding planning. Before the pandemic, the duo’s wedding was scheduled to take place in September.
“The first time we went to go visit our venue, a venue that we didn’t even use in Palm Springs,” he said at the time. “It was a Merv Griffin estate and it was so big. He literally had a panic attack in there and thought he had a heart attack. We had to go to the hospital. We were like, ‘What in the hell is going on?’ And then when we started looking for outfits and things of that nature, he got a panic attack.”
