Allison Kuch with sister Emily. Courtesy of Allison Kuch/Instagram
Influencer Allison Kuch‘s sister is opening up about the “shock” of canceling her wedding to an NFL player hours before their ceremony was set to begin.
“There was a lot of me that was like, ‘Did I really just do that? Is this for good?’” Emily Kuch recalled on the Sunday, October 13, episode of the “Sunday Sports Club With Allison Kuch” podcast. “In the moment, I was kind of just like, ‘Did I make the right decision?’ … I’m like, ‘S—, what is going on?’”
Emily, a digital creator based in San Diego, admitted that she was “a little bit” nervous to discuss what went wrong in her nearly 10-year relationship with the pro athlete, whose name wasn’t mentioned throughout the podcast. (The Daily Mail reported in 2022 that Emily was engaged to Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle Ronnie Stanley. He has not addressed Emily’s podcast appearance, but Us Weekly has reached out for comment regarding her claims.)
“There’s a lot of things I had to learn after leaving that long of a relationship … I didn’t really know how to be my own person,” Emily explained. “We started dating really young, so I was like, ‘Who am I even by myself?’”
The pair’s relationship began in 2013, but they didn’t get engaged until 2021. Emily experienced “a lot of ups and downs” with her ex before he ultimately proposed, and she cited him “not being faithful” or “truthful” as some of the biggest hurdles.
The duo lived together after he was drafted to the NFL, but after learning of her ex’s alleged infidelity, Emily moved out in 2018. It wasn’t the first time he had cheated, so Emily didn’t want to become complacent. Eventually, however, the pair reconciled and she moved back in after seeing her ex make “such an effort to make it work.”
Allison Kuch, Isaac Rochell, Ronnie Stanley and Emily Kuch. Courtesy of Allison Kuch/Instagram
“I don’t necessarily think he had changed, but I thought that he was remorseful about the things he did to me,” she added. “And I think that he as a person was growing and evolving through this experience. I also was too. I will never point all the fingers at one person.”
After finally getting engaged more than eight years into their relationship, the couple were set to tie the knot in Hawaii in 2022. They were “arguing a lot” leading up to their wedding, but Emily still “felt pretty good” about going through with the marriage. Her ex was working through an injury, which sparked “so much uncertainty” about his NFL future and caused some tension. The topic of a prenuptial agreement also brought on drama.
“Everybody’s gonna be like, ‘Oh, she didn’t want to sign a prenup.’ No, I wanted a prenup,” Emily said. “[With] football, you know, brain health is always top of mind as a partner. Prenup, you can solve that before you get married to make sure that your person’s set up after something happens to you, God forbid. … There were some things that we could not come to an agreement on. I was not disagreeing with crazy things.”
Emily pointed out that she had already “given up so much of myself” — she quit her job following their engagement — but her then-fiancé’s pushback about the prenup made it seem like he wasn’t “as concerned” about helping her in the future.
“At the end of the day, I was like, ‘I would just be with this person forever, I don’t even care about legally getting married,’” she said. “I was like, ‘I don’t need to sign a paper to know that this person’s gonna be my husband, the father of my kids.’ … He didn’t want to do that.”
When it came to considering the prenup, Emily looked to her parents’ marriage and her sister’s relationship with NFL free agent Isaac Rochell for guidance. “I would rather walk away from something knowing that I chose myself than to spend the rest of my life not being loved the way that I love somebody,” she added, clapping back at “gold digger” claims. “When you sign a prenup, you can’t talk about kids. … There were a lot of thoughts that ran through my mind.”
Allison Kuch and Issac Rochell. Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for Spotify
Despite what some fans might think, the prenup was “absolutely not” the only reason Emily pulled the plug on the wedding. Another red flag was raised when she found out that her ex had a second bachelor party in a different country. His behavior in the days leading up to the ceremony also sparked concern.
“He was 40 minutes late to the [wedding] rehearsal, shows up in sweat pants,” Emily said. “I don’t even really care about what somebody’s wearing … [but] to me, that was out of spite.”
Emily felt “humiliated,” and the dynamic didn’t improve much at the rehearsal dinner. “He didn’t speak to me,” she claimed. “I sat with my friend and her husband, actually, at a table. Not with him. … [He] didn’t really interact with me, didn’t really take pictures with me, didn’t really dance with me.”
From Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen to Kroy Biermann and Kim Zolciak-Biermann, not every NFL love story has a happy ending. Brady — who retired from football for good in February 2023 — began dating the supermodel in 2006, two months before learning his ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynahan was pregnant with the pair’s first baby. Son Jack […]
Until then, Emily was convinced the pair would be able to work through their issues before their wedding day. “Maybe I was delusional, maybe I was stupid. I don’t know, to be honest,” she said. “The morning of our wedding, everybody’s asking, ‘Are you gonna do this?’”
Being in a “pressure cooker” situation helped push Emily to make the decision to end it. When she met her ex to have their last conversation on their wedding day, he never acknowledged “how beautiful” she looked with her full hair and makeup done. “Love was not in the room with us,” she explained. “I walked out of that room, I said, ‘Should we cancel the ceremony?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I think that’s probably best.’”
Though he agreed to put a stop to the wedding, the groom still “had the whole reception” as Emily was attempting to flee Hawaii. Photos and videos of the “full-on party” were shared via social media, which Emily said was “devastating.” She moved in with Allison and had an “existential crisis” while trying to determine who she was outside of her long-term relationship.
“I started to try to view this as, like, ‘How could I use this experience to be a better person, a better partner for my next partner?’ You have to spend a lot of time with yourself. You have to date yourself. You have to love yourself,” she said. “Where do you want to go on a date? Take yourself there. … Nobody can take that [self-love] away from you.”
