Sara Evans released the first episode of her new podcast on Thursday, and let’s just say it was an eye-opener.

At a time when many celebrities hide their personal lives, keep things vague or rely on major spin, Evans appears to be taking an entirely different approach on “Diving in Deep with Sara Evans.”

The country star tackles a sensitive subject on the hourlong podcast, focusing on “abuse in relationships.” Evans’ podcast also provides a detailed update on her marriage to former University of Alabama quarterback Jay Barker.

As you may recall, Evans and Barker have been estranged for a few years, and the cracks in their relationship emerged in a public way in January 2022. That’s when Barker was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after reportedly trying to hit Evans with a vehicle.

In June 2022, Barker entered a “best interest” plea to a misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment, according to The Associated Press. The plea meant he did not admit guilt but agreed that the state had enough evidence to prove its case, according to a spokesman for the Nashville District Attorney General’s office. Barker reportedly was sentenced to one year of probation.

Evans and Barker were in the midst of divorce proceedings when he was arrested in Nashville. The country star had filed for divorce from her husband about five months earlier, citing irreconcilable differences and “inappropriate marital conduct,” according to court records.

Evans and Barker were married in 2008 and had a blended family, with three children from her first marriage to Craig Schelske, and four children from his first marriage to Amy DiGiovanna. During most of their marriage, Evans and Barker lived in Birmingham, but as she reveals in her podcast, they separated after a “bad fight” in July 2020. Evans moved back to Nashville, where she lives now.

READ: Inside Sara Evans and Jay Barker’s Mountain Brook home, life in Birmingham

As you might expect, the rumor mill went into overdrive after Barker’s arrest in 2022, with fans of both celebrities speculating about what had happened. Evans stayed mum about the situation for more than two years, keeping her social media posts focused on her career and making no public statements about her marriage — until now.

Her podcast is tied to a forthcoming album, “Unbroke,” and its first single, “Pride,” which Evans says was written about her relationship with Barker. The single was released on Thursday, as well, offering extra insight into Evans’ situation, albeit in a less direct way.

Evans, 53, describes herself as “an open book” in the debut episode of “Diving in Deep.” And while she doesn’t tell listeners everything they might want to know, Evans provides plenty of inside information — about herself, her husband and their troubled marriage — in the confessional episode.

Here are some things we learned from the podcast, along with the primary revelation that Evans and Barker have reconciled. Barker doesn’t appear in the podcast, which focuses on Evan’s perspective, but she indicates that he’s OK with everything she says, because it’s her “story to tell.” Evans also says that Barker — pinpointed as the abuser in their relationship — has mended his ways and is likely to appear on her podcast in the future.

READ: Sara Evans, Jay Barker reunite after divorce, aggravated assault arrest: ‘We just love each other’

‘HE WAS IN CHARGE’

According to Evans, Barker has a problem with power and control. This issue became worse over time, although Evans says it was a factor in their marriage from the get-go. She describes herself as a submissive spouse, harking back to the way she was raised in an old-fashioned family in Missouri. ”Jay had an opinion about women that he didn’t realize he had,” Evans says. “He became addicted, I would say, about being the boss of me. And trying to control me.” Evans describes their relationship as “one-sided, volatile, with a lot of passion … He was in charge, and the boss, and that was it.”

Evans also points to Barker’s background in football — as a quarterback for the Crimson Tide and then in the NFL — as one reason for the way he approached their marriage. “I think that any quarterback and any football player, especially if you played NFL, which he did for seven years, will tell you that there’s a little bit of a warlike, PTSD that comes with it, because it’s very violent,” Evans says. At the same time, she says, Barker felt he had to maintain a “perfect” public image, which added to the emotional strain. “I could tell that things were getting bad, and at the time, we were remodeling a home … everything went wrong,” Evans says. “Everything that could go wrong went wrong. I don’t know if there had been, you know, too many concussions or what, but even through all of that, I loved him so much.”

ANGER AND ALCOHOL

Barker never drank alcohol before he met her, Evans says, but it became a major obstacle for the couple. (Evans says she likes to drink, but never had a problem with it.) Booze fueled Barker’s anger, Evans says, and this contributed to “many bad fights” that made her afraid of him. “I think I started realizing … we’re in abuse. I think we’re using abuse in the marriage,” Evans says. “And I didn’t want to admit that. And I don’t think he saw it as that.” The abusive incidents happened in private, Evans says, and she never let her children see “Daddy Jay” treating her badly. “He would never do or say anything unless we were alone, so I just thought, I will manage this,” Evans says.

‘IT’S NOT OK’

Evans talks about Barker raising his voice, acting “mean” and behaving in ways that felt threatening to her. Evans doesn’t offer many specifics, except for the incident in January 2022. She doesn’t discuss physical abuse in the podcast, but the lyrics of her new song, “Pride,” suggest it was a factor. “You left a mark on my face and brought a dozen red flags in a vase,” the song begins. “You thought everything would be OK, but it’s not OK. Nobody saw the other side, you’d turn into Jekyll and I’d run and hide. And I’d come back, I don’t know why.” In her podcast, Evans says she believes some abusive relationships are “a lot more dangerous” than her situation with Barker, and some are less dangerous.

“I think he saw me and he saw this shell … and he’s putting in all the things that he wants in the shell. I think there were times where I was just a body,” Evans says. “And when I became my own person and I had my own opinions, or I would disagree with him, he did not understand that. He couldn’t comprehend that.”

ROCK BOTTOM

Barker was unlikely to change his ways until he hit “rock bottom,” Evans says. His lowest point came in January 2022, Evans says, on the night of Barker’s arrest. In her podcast, Evans gives a detailed account of what happened on the day of the incident, starting with an argument she and Barker had over lunch and ending with her calling a friend the next morning to bail him out of jail. (That segment starts at the 13:46 point in the video above, and runs through 25:11.)

After the argument at lunchtime, Evans says, she ignored texts from Barker and went to a neighbor’s house that evening for a bonfire. Evans and one of her daughters were there, she says, along with the friend and her daughter. When Evans left the neighbor’s house, which is across the street from her own, Barker was waiting in a truck parked on the street.

“During that time, he was very, very worried that I was moving on with my life, that I had found someone else, or that I would, quote-unquote, cheat on him,” Evans says. “And so he was just over at the house, seeing what I was doing, I think because I was giving him the silent treatment the whole evening while he was texting me, he was going crazy. ‘Where is she? What is she doing?’”

When Evans saw Barker parked near her house that night, she knew he was “not in a good head space,” and that frightened her.

“It scared all of us, especially my child that was with me,” Evans says. “And so the friend of ours was driving me; we were getting ready to pull into the driveway … He had a verbal altercation with my child, who had never seen that side of him, ever, and it scared the shit out of her. And then he jumped in his truck and he (was) sort of backing up at a very high speed. I knew Jay, so I didn’t think, I didn’t feel the same way that my child felt. My child thought that he was going to plow our car down, that he was backing up towards our car, and that she was about to watch something horrific. Or at the very least, at the very least, an accident, which would have been his truck hitting my side of the car, where I was in the front seat. She was terrified, and called 911. He sped away and cops came. … My child was more upset than I was, because I’ve been privately having these experiences with Jay for 13 years, or 14 years. It was a first for her, to see her dad like that.”

WHEN POLICE ARRIVED

Evans says she texted Barker, warning him to stay away from her house after the police were called. The officers asked her several questions, Evans says, then told her they’d put out a warrant for Barker’s arrest. When she tried to downplay the situation to avoid the warrant, Evans says, the officers told her they had to follow state law. Later that night, after Evans went to bed, Barker returned to her house, she says. The police nabbed him, put him in handcuffs and took Barker to jail.

Although she was traumatized by the incident, Evans says, she never believed Barker was trying to hurt her. “I really honestly did not think that he was trying to hit our car,” Evans says. “I think he trying to back up as fast as he could, to see who I was in the car with, to see if I was with another man. And my child thought, you know, he’s going to run into them. … I don’t know how close he got, honestly, and I don’t know what it looked like to her. But I heard her scream, like, I heard her scream, so loud.”

‘A LOT OF WOMEN WILL JUDGE ME’

After Barker’s arrest, Evans says, she threw herself into her music as a distraction and began to tour again. But Evans says she never stopped loving Barker, calling him “a great man who made some really bad decisions.” The first step to reconciliation, she says, came via a text message from Barker, who was defying a court order that said he couldn’t contact her.

“So I was on the bus one night, back on the road, and I got a text from Jay. … I just could not believe it, because I thought he would never speak to me again, because, you know, in his mind, I had him thrown in jail,” Evans says. “And he was mad about that or whatever. I mean, in my mind, I did not have him thrown in jail. In my mind, he got himself thrown in jail. But I knew the he would see it that way … blame everything on me. I don’t know, it must have been about three months (later). All of a sudden I got this text from him, and it said, ‘Everybody says that I shouldn’t contact you … but you are still my wife.’ And the standards that I set would not be the same standards as a lot of women, maybe, you know. So a lot of women will judge me and will want to judge me. When he said, ‘But you are still my wife,’ I don’t know, I just melted. Because I thought, I am still your wife and we can talk if we want to. We’re both adults.”

THE ROAD BACK

According to Evans, she and Barker “sort of tip-toed back to each other.” Their reconciliation wasn’t immediate, but Evans says she knew Barker was serious when he declared he would do anything to avoid losing her, including going to rehab. “My conditions were, you have to be in therapy for the rest of your life, and we have to be in marriage counseling for the rest of our lives,” Evans says. “And when we go to marriage counseling, you have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” After Barker started therapy, Evans says, their relationship improved. Still, it took another year before she told anyone they were getting back together.

“I had very little to go on, in terms of what to expect from a man,” Evans says. “My father ignored me, even though I was famous. Not that that matters, but it’s like, you would think that, you know, I made it to the top of my industry, and even though Jay was mean to me at times, I knew that he really did love me. I’m also in therapy, because I need to always remember … that I need to be able to say whatever I want, be whoever I want, do whatever I want. … And he is not going to tell me I can’t. And he knows that now.”

FAITH AND FRIENDS

Evans says God was in her corner throughout the ordeal, but she often felt very much alone. Friends from Birmingham were a comfort, she says, but for the most part, Evans had to take care of herself.

“I had a couple of friends in Mountain Brook that were looking out for me, and that I, you know, would call when it was a bad day,” Evans says. “I would say that true taking care of me, for no other reason than just you love me, you know, checking in on me … I’m talking about people who, like, nobody who makes money off of me, or anything like that. Just normal people, nobody in the industry. (It would be) probably a couple of friends in Mountain Brook and a friend that I have here.”

READ: Sara Evans: ‘If you think my life has been easy for one second, think again’

TIME TO FORGIVE

Evans says she and her children have forgiven Barker for what happened, and their Christian faith helped in that regard. “Every day we thank God that we didn’t split,” Evans says. “And that doesn’t mean we’re all better, everything is just perfect, but we’re together. And I can honestly tell you that people can change, because he’s a totally different person. .. And I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”

WHAT’S NEXT

The country star says she’s hopeful about her future with Barker, despite their problematic past. Evans compares their relationship to the “George & Tammy” series on Showtime, where George Jones and Tammy Wynette “couldn’t stay away from each other.” However, Evans emphasizes that she’s not in favor of a blanket “Stand by Your Man” policy.

“I truly now believe that we are going to stay together forever and be very happy, but that’s not going to be without rules that I’ve put into place, like we will be in therapy for the rest of our lives,” Evans says. “He will be in therapy for the rest of his life. I will be in therapy for the rest of my life. Because there are reasons why I chose to stay. There are a lot of women who would just say, you know, ‘Screw this, I’m out.’ … In our situation, I do believe that this is a miracle from God and we’re so happy now. But I don’t want anyone to think that I’m advocating staying in a relationship where you are ever, in your gut, you know that you need to exit the situation. Every woman needs to follow her gut on that, and do what is best for her. And I hope that I’ve done that. … We’re living it day by day.”