Ethan Plath and Olivia Plath have split after five years of marriage.
“Ethan and I have decided to go our separate ways,” Olivia, 25, wrote in an Instagram statement on Friday, October 27. “I have ambivalent memories of us being 18 years old, innocently dreaming of forever – but the partner you choose is a reflection of the world you want to live in, and at 18 I didn’t know who I was or what kind of life I wanted to create for myself.”
Olivia noted that, seven years into their relationship, she started on a “journey of questioning, deconstructing and rebuilding” that led her to the decision to end their marriage.
“There were good moments and I want to remember and honor those,” she added. “We fell in love as children and are going our separate ways as adults. Wiser, older and braver. We will be OK.”
Olivia concluded with a note for Ethan, 25. “Thank you for the good times,” she wrote. “I wish the best for you.”
Ethan addressed the pair’s split in his own Instagram statement on Friday, noting that “it just didn’t work between us” after they “both gave it all we had.”
“It seemed we were constantly pulling each other in opposite directions in life with different goals,” he penned. “I wish Olivia the best in the future ahead. I care for her deeply and always will.”
The pair’s breakup news comes nearly five months after rumors swirled that the pair had separated. In early 2023, eagle-eyed fans noticed that Ethan and Olivia had not posted social media photos of each other for several months. Speculation grew rampant when Olivia’s sister Sophia Meggs alleged the following June that the twosome were in the middle of a divorce. Olivia, however, shut down the claims at the time.
“A friend informed me of this post so I just wanted to take a second and clarify. Sophia is my younger sister, but her and I have a very distant/strained relationship due to our worldviews and reactions to the ultra-religious world we were raised in,” Olivia wrote via Instagram at the time. “Subsequently, she actually isn’t a reliable source when it comes to my personal information as she doesn’t know about my personal life. There is a lot of speculation going around, but if Ethan and I had something to share, we would. Thanks!”
Ethan — who is the eldest son of Welcome to Plathville’s Kim Plath and Barry Plath, who separated themselves in June 2022 — and Olivia tied the knot in October 2018. Their nuptials soon sparked a feud with Kim over planning.
“When we were dating, I knew that I was being controlled in what we were allowed to do, what we’re allowed to say,” Olivia exclusively told Us Weekly in August 2021. “I remember the night that it clicked for me was the night we got engaged. We come in the door, [Kim] waited up for us and she, like, grabbed my hand and looked at the ring. And the first thing she said was, ‘Oh, I want to trade rings with you.’ And I was like, ‘OK, that’s really weird.’”
After the pair’s wedding day, they continued to navigate their ups and downs.
“Our relationship almost had to hit rock bottom for us to kind of wake up, prioritize and actually deal with our own problems,” Olivia told Us at the time, noting couple’s therapy helped them work through their issues and respective childhood trauma. “It really sucked hitting rock bottom. When we started the season, pretty much, like, everything [was] not going well at all and kind of came to a head within the first few weeks. It also means that as uncomfortable as the first few episodes and scenes are going to be, it gets a lot better. It gets worse before it gets better. … We’re in a much better place now.”
The twosome separated later that year, which played out on season 3 of Welcome to Plathville.
“I know part of it’s my fault because I don’t see him very often and I don’t really feel valued that he doesn’t want to move or start something new, so when he comes home in the door, like, my immediate reaction is, ‘Alright, we have to talk, things are bad.’ I feel like I’m nagging him,” she said during a joint therapy session in a September 2021 episode. “To avoid that, he grabs a beer, runs outside and works on his car so he doesn’t have to be around me because all I want to do is talk about those things and he doesn’t want to.”
Several episodes later, fans watched Ethan decide to list their joint Cairo, Georgia house — which was near his family’s own compound — for sale.
“I’m putting the house on the market because I’ve come to the place in my life where I realize that getting out of Cairo is going to be a good thing for me,” Ethan revealed in the episode. “I kind of want to move on, especially after the trip. I felt, like, there’s a lot of really, really beautiful places … If I had the chance to live in different places, then I’d love to do that, whereas before I was real set on sticking here and that was that. Now, I don’t have any intentions of staying in Cairo whether things work out with Olivia and I or not.”
In the Tuesday, October 24, episode of Welcome to Plathville, Olivia even admitted that she had certain “regrets” about her marriage, but did not know if she’d be better off single. “Ethan is the one and only relationship I’ve ever been in, so I have nothing to compare it to,” she said in a confessional. “The more I deconstruct all the beliefs around marriage that I was taught growing up, the more I feel kind of confused about what I [should] expect out of a relationship.”
