Gypsy Rose Blanchard opened up about her ideal future wedding with Ken Urker months before her ex’s untimely death at age 34.
“I don’t want to have a quick wedding, I want to have the big wedding,” Blanchard 35, told TMZ in a May interview.
“I want to have the poofy dress, I want to have the family there, because my first marriage, I got married in the visitation room by the bathroom of a prison,” Blanchard continued at the time. “I deserve my wedding.”
Blanchard and Ken started out as pen pals while the former was behind bars for her role in the 2015 murder of her mom, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard. After seeing the HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest in 2017, Ken wrote a supportive letter to Gypsy Rose while she was serving out her seven-year sentence.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s Ex-Husband Ryan Anderson Reacts to Ken Urker’s Death
After visiting Gypsy Rose in prison, Ken subsequently proposed in October 2018. They split the following year, and Gypsy Rose moved on with Ryan Anderson, whom she married in a prison ceremony in July 2022. When Gypsy Rose and Anderson’s marriage fell apart in early 2024, she reconciled with Ken and the pair welcomed their first child, a daughter named Aurora, that December.
Us confirmed that Urker was found unresponsive in a Raceland, Louisiana, residence on Thursday, October 1, on what was his 34th birthday. The Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office confirmed Urker’s death, telling Us its officers “responded to a residence” after “receiving a call at 6:15 p.m.”
Authorities said Urker “was found dead upon arrival” and added, “At this time, we are continuing the death investigation.” A report from the Louisiana’s Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office, obtained by Us, includes interviews with Gypsy Rose’s half-brother, Dylan Blanchard, and his wife, Anita Blanchard.
Anita placed a 911 call for help when Urker failed to answer his phone or the door at his apartment after she and Dylan, along with Urker’s boss Justin Daigle, tried to check on him. Anita informed an emergency dispatcher that Dylan and Daigle were able to move some blinds to gain entry into the residence through a window, where they found Urker unconscious and “cold to the touch,” per the report.
In their report, Lafourche Parish police detailed a conversation that officers had with Dylan and Anita once they began to investigate Urker’s death. The couple confirmed that Urker had attended church with them at around 8:45 p.m. local time on Wednesday, September 30.
“They stated Mr. Urker made comments of being depressed and upset,” the report noted.
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Gypsy Rose broke her silence in the wake of Urker’s passing, telling People she doesn’t know if his death was “intentional or not.”
“He was not in a good state of mind lately,” Blachhard told the outlet. “I’m in disbelief. I can’t think. I’ve screamed until my throat burns.”
While speaking to TMZ back in May of her potential future wedding with Urker, Gypsy Rose discussed the pressure she said they both felt to get married.
“I feel like I don’t feel pressure from him, he doesn’t feel pressure from me, so we don’t pressure each other, but I feel like the world does,” she said at the time. “I feel like the world is just asking that question nonstop and it kind of sucks because, you know, what happens if we are one of those couples who, you know — we don’t want to get married right away. We don’t want to rush it.”
She added, “Our relationship does feel like a marriage – we are raising a child together, we live together — but there’s lots of couples, even in Hollywood, that have been together 30-plus years and they still aren’t married.”
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