Born Paula Ann Hiers, Paula Deen married her first husband, James “Jimmy” Deen, in 1965, when she was just 18 years old. She soon became the mother of two sons, Jamie and Bobby. Her married life, however, was far from idyllic, due to her husband’s alcohol consumption. “The drinking changed him,” Deen wrote in her memoir, “Paula Deen: It Ain’t All About the Cookin’.” “When he drank, he became dumb as a rock and I couldn’t depend on him.” His drinking drove a wedge between them, and between the verbal put-downs he hurled at her, their rift grew increasingly larger as the years passed.
After nearly 30 years of marriage, they separated in 1992 and subsequently divorced. According to court documents obtained by RadarOnline, the marriage had become “irretrievably broken” by the time they finally split up. In addition, Deen’s divorce filing starkly stated that there was “no chance of reconciliation” for the fractured couple.
The final straw came when she discovered that Jimmy hadn’t been making the payments on son Bobby’s truck. “It had been 27 years, and now he was dragging us all down,” she wrote, recalling the moment she decided she had enough and wanted out. There was, however, one final indignity she was forced to endure before ending the marriage. “But even when I filed for divorce, he never left the house,” Deen added. “I was the one who had to leave.”
