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Remembering the time Joe Exotic gave us the scoop on his engagement…

12:34 PM EDT on April 2, 2021

Things continue to get worse for Joe Exotic.

Earlier this week, Dillon Passage – Joe Exotic's most recent husband – announced on social media that he is seeking a divorce from the country music croonin', meth usin', tiger abusin' man from Wynnewood. Here's his dreamy Instagram post about the news:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CM5TlF4h-Is/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading

I don't know about you, but that seemed more like a "Hey guys, I'm single!" post than a divorce announcement. Either way, good for Dillon. When he married a polygamist tiger zoo owner whose previous husband accidentally killed himself only a few months earlier, the last thing he probably expected was for his new husband to be implicated in a murder-for-hire plot and for both of them to become international celebrities. That had to be an adjustment.

Here at The TLO Home Office, this announcement is a bit bittersweet.

Way back in December of 2017, when Joe Exotic was just a regional celebrity politician who owned a tiger zoo and not the most famous prisoner in the US penal system, he actually gave us the scoop on his engagement and marriage to Dylan. The story got a shit ton of traffic the week we posted it, and thanks to the Tiger King traffic gold rush from last spring, is now one of the 10 most viewed stories in TLO history.

I remember when I got the news. I was sitting in a new house I just moved into the weekend before, and Joe – or maybe one of his methed-out groupies – sent me this Twitter DM:

Around that time, I heard rumors that Netflix was filming a documentary about Joe Exotic, which would be like a blogger in 1975 hearing rumors that George Lucas was making a little sci-fi film about the happenings in a galaxy far-far-away.

This was his reply:

As we'd later learn, the Netflix documentary would be about way more than Joe's newlywed romance. I think that may be the only thing Joe's ever underplayed in his life.

I can smell pageviews about as well as a tiger can smell expired Walmart meat, so I knew Joe's scoop would get a ton of hits. I quickly put on my journalistic flat cap, and before you could say "That Bitch Down In Florida," I asked a few more questions:

Yep, I got my Joe Exotic husbands mixed up and accidentally referred to Dillon as Travis. Oops! Fortunately, Joe didn't seem to mind the slipup:

Do you like how I brushed off the name mixup like I had missed a layup on the basketball court?

The next day, I quickly put an article together about the story and published it. Joe Exotic was pleased:

Outside of the time he complained that he couldn't cast multiple votes for himself in Ogle Madness, that's the last we'd hear from Joe Exotic until we sent him a couple of emails while he was in prison. They were kind of boring.

Anyway, I guess this concludes this edition of "TLO Inside the Story." If Joe or Dillon ever get married again, I hope they don't forget the little people and give us the scoop. We love pageviews as much as Jude and Jody loves folks.

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