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Jessica Robertson’s Secret Marriage Revealed In New Book With ‘Duck Dynasty’ Star Jep Robertson

By Lindsay McCane
Published on: 00:59 PST, Jun 10, 2015

Jessica Robertson’s secret marriage has been revealed in her new book she co-wrote with her husband, Duck Dynasty star Jep Robertson, The Good, the Bad, and the Grace of God: What Honesty and Pain Taught Us About Faith, Family, and Forgiveness.

In the book, where Jep also revealed he was sexually abused as a child, Jessica opened up about her first marriage to her youth pastor when she was only 18 years old.

“The kids actually did not know that I was married before — and it’s something that we were going to share later on when they were a little more mature,” she told Entertainment Tonight during an exclusive interview. “But I really felt like this was an opportunity to share with the world some of the struggles that I went through with that, and coming out through the grace of God. You know, coming out the other side, and meeting Jep, and turning my life around.”

In the book, Jessica talks about how her first marriage came to be, and how she originally felt “unsure and scared” when her youth pastor first approached her. At the time, she was still in high school, between her junior and senior year. The pastor, she writes, called her into his office and told her that he had romantic feelings for her, Fox News reports.

“For a girl who didn’t feel good or thin or pretty enough, it was a powerful feeling to be noticed and chosen,” she said. “I also started to feel that I should be in love with him even though I wasn’t in love with him. Everyone said I was the luckiest girl in the world to have snagged him.” Robertson attributes her first failed marriage to her being too young and naive. She said she was a “people pleaser” and wanted to make others happy before herself.

“I was really naive at the time and I was a people pleaser,” she said. “If I could have just made a few other decisions when I was younger, I wouldn’t have made so many mistakes.”

Jep and Jessica have now been married for 14 years and have four children together- Lily, 11, Merritt, 10, Priscilla, 8, and River, 7. She said they weren’t trying to hide her previous marriage from her children, however the topic simply never came up as a point of discussion.

“We’ve been married for 14 years now. So that’s not who I am anymore,” she continued. “It’s not that we were hiding it, it just wasn’t a topic of discussion with our kids.”

Jessica and Jep’s book The Good, the Bad, and the Grace of God: What Honesty and Pain Taught Us About Faith, Family, and Forgiveness will be available on June 23. The new season of Duck Dynasty will air on June 24.

[Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images]

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