Layla Taylor Makes Red Carpet Debut With Kelsie Chesser

Layla Taylor of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives brought her relationship with girlfriend Kelsie Chesser into the public eye on Tuesday, October 6, appearing together at New York City's Virtual Reali-Tea Awards. In an interview with Page Six, Taylor, 25, confirmed that the event marked the couple's first red carpet outing together.

Chesser acknowledged the weight of the moment during the same interview, which Page Six shared online that night. "I'm actually super nervous," Chesser told Page Six.

The red carpet appearance follows Taylor's decision to speak publicly about her sexuality. During the July 29 episode of the "On Purpose With Jay Shetty" podcast, she came out as bisexual. Taylor shares two children with her ex-husband, Clayton Wessel. The pair divorced in 2023, a year before Bravo's Mormon Wives premiered in 2024.

Chesser first confirmed her relationship with Taylor in a July 21 TikTok video. She also told Page Six that she had "met the kids," and nodded enthusiastically when asked whether Taylor's children "love" her.

Reflecting on her journey, Taylor told Shetty, 39, that she spent much of her life unsure how to address her sexuality. "I'm gay and I'm bi and date women and men," she told him on the podcast. She described growing up in a predominantly white area and feeling set apart from her peers as a young Black girl, and recalled watching shows such as Pretty Little Liars and noticing Shay Mitchell kissing a girl. "Growing up, I didn't fit in for a lot of reasons in my childhood. I grew up in a very predominantly white area, and being a little Black girl, I already stood out so much to my peers and took that on a lot more than I feel like I realized. I always had these thoughts and I kind of laugh about it now because I would be watching shows like Pretty Little Liars and I would watch, like, Shay Mitchell kissing a girl. I was like, 'Wait, why is that hot?'" she told Celebrity News: Latest Celeb News & Pictures - Us Weekly.

She continued, explaining that a lack of visible queer representation left her without a frame of reference for her feelings. "I didn't know what those feelings were because I didn't have queer representation around me of [someone] I could look at it and be like, 'OK, this is normal.' It wasn't necessarily that I had parents — or I was Mormon at one point — but I didn't necessarily have that pressure to not do that. I just didn't have people around me that modeled that," she told Celebrity News: Latest Celeb News & Pictures - Us Weekly.