Who Is Tammy Slaton's Boyfriend? '1,000-Lb' Star Dating Married Man Jerry Sykes Whose Wife Is Very Ill
The TLC star's new boyfriend is married!
Suzanne Tucker / shutterstock The Slaton sisters, Tammy and Amy, have been YouTube sensations since 2014. Their signature humor and quirky videos have kept fans watching them for years. Recently, however, they wanted to make changes in their lives and their health.
At the beginning of their My 600-Lb Life reality show season on TLC, both sisters were hoping to get weight loss surgery. Tammy was over 600 lbs and Amy was 400 lbs.
Amy hoped to lose weight in order to have a baby with her husband, Michael. Tammy was simply hoping to regain her mobility; she told audiences that her weight has meant she hasn't left the house in six years except to get medical treatment.
Now, Tammy has a new motivation to keep her going: her new love interest.
Who is Tammy Slaton's boyfriend, Jerry Sykes?
Earlier this year, she revealed that she had been chatting with him online on the show and then she posted photos of them together on Twitter. But there's an issue: Sykes seems to have a wife at home and fans have questions.
Who is Jerry Sykes, and is he married? Keep reading for all the messy details.
Who is Tammy Slaton? She started off as a YouTube personality.
Slaton is a 32-year-old woman who lives in Kentucky with her sister, Amy, and Amy's husband, Michael. The two are very close and have been YouTube stars since 2014.
They went viral when they did the "chubby bunny" challenge: a task where they kept adding marshmallows to their mouths and trying to say the words, "chubby bunny." The sisters ended up cracking each other up and fans loved them.
Even after the novelty of the marshmallow mouth video faded, viewers stuck around to see the women do makeup tutorials, cooking videos, and just generally bicker and banter with one another.
Tammy and Amy Slaton on the TLC show.
She's one of the stars of 1000-lb Sisters.
The sisters agreed to go on the TLC show 1000-lb Sisters because their weight was becoming a major obstacle to continuing their lives. Amy wanted to have a baby with her husband and feared her weight was preventing that.
Tammy, at over 600 lbs, was home-bound and often ill. She had been hospitalized over the years for two blood clots, several bouts of pneumonia and multiple other procedures. She had even been placed on life support.
"I'm tired of being sick all the time," she said to reporters earlier this year. "I'm just done."
Is she having any luck losing weight on her show?
When the season of 1000-lb Sisters began, Tammy weighed over 605 lbs and had severely limited mobility. She claimed to have been house-bound for over six years and was living with her sister so she could have help taking care of herself.
The sisters sought weight loss surgery from a doctor in Atlanta, and he told them they would both need to lose a serious amount of weight even before he would operate. But things went badly for her right from the beginning when she was all but unable to take a walk as exercise.
She got too tired and winded to continue. Things never picked up for her and she was only able to shed 18 pounds before the deadline, and the doctor refused to operate on her.
Amy, on the other hand, lost 31 pounds and was able to get the surgery she wanted. By the close of the season, she had recovered from her surgery and had lost a total of 100 lbs.
She did manage to meet someone special online.
The good side of Slaton's online visibility is that it gives her an opportunity to connect with people. One such person is a guy named Jerry Sykes, whom she met online.
Amy was immediately protective of her sister, telling the cameras that Tammy had been catfished before and she didn't want to see her sister hurt again. Tammy was being similarly cautious, saying she hadn't video chatted with her new beau, because she was worried that he wouldn't like what he saw. But she also really wanted to find someone to love her.
She shared her feelings by saying to the cameras, "I question myself, wondering why it's hard for people to love me."
Who is Tammy Slaton's boyfriend, Jerry Sykes?
It turns out that Slaton and her online love interest moved things into the physical space. She posted a pair of photos of them together in February, saying "Bae for Life" with some heart emojis.
When a fan congratulated her on finding her first love, Slaton swiftly corrected that rumor, saying, "Today is not my first love I've been with women and men before I was with Jerry but I think Jerry's the one you know I mean."
On the show, she had revealed that Sykes is in his early 40s, making him about 11 years older than her, and that he has a job, but she doesn't share much in the way of info about where he lives or what he does for work.
Tammy and her boyfriend Jerry Sykes.
Is Jerry Sykes married? Apparently, he has a wife.
Slaton's fans had the scoop that Sykes isn't exactly single. A number of followers on Twitter pointed out that Sykes has a wife somewhere.
That wasn't news to Slaton. She tweeted, "Are you aware that I do know he is married and his wife is very sick so you ain't telling me nothing I don't know."
Where Sykes's wife actually is, the status of their marriage, and what kind of illness she has are all open questions. His social media is no help, either. His Instagram is just a few selfies and his Facebook account is pretty private.
Is Jerry Sykes really the one for Tammy Slaton? Time will tell.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.
Editor's Note: This article was originally posted on February 10, 2020 and was updated with the latest information.