CrossFit millionairess Lauren Jenai has admitted that her decision to marry an accused murderer without insisting on a prenup makes no sense to other people — but she is going ahead anyway.
'I've gut-checked myself,' she said in an exclusive interview with DailyMailTV. 'It is a little bit of an unusual situation.
'It was like ''What are people going to think?'' especially in the beginning.
'But at the end of the day, I love spending time with him, I love talking to him. We talk for hours every day, so, even though we are not together we have really come to know each other.'
Jenai plans to marry Franklin Tyrone Tucker this summer — probably inside the lock-up where he is awaiting trial for first degree murder. They haven't met face-to-face for more than 30 years.
CrossFit co-founder Lauren Jenai, 47, is planning a summer prison wedding to inmate Franklin Tyrone Tucker, 47, who is accused of murder
The couple had crushes on each other in high school but haven't met face-to-face in 30 years, only communicating through video chat, phone and letters. Jenai is pictured in this dated photo
Lauren tells DailyMailTV that she was dating Tucker's best friend while they were in high school, so Tucker (pictured as a teen) didn't want to act on his feelings for her at the time
Jenai insists Tucker is innocent and tells DailyMailTV they reconnected before his arrest but fell in love through these love letters and artwork he sent her from prison
Lauren and Ty had crushes on each other as students at different Philadelphia high schools. But they never acted on their mutual attraction — until now.
At 16, Lauren was dating Ty's best friend, so even when another student played her a secret recording of him expressing his love for her, she didn't act on it.
And nor did he. 'He didn't want to be in a position of stealing his best friend's girl,' she told DailyMailTV.
'And when he found out that I had heard him saying how much he was in love with me he got really embarrassed and nothing ever happened.
'I had a real crush on him too,' she added.
Now, decades later and with their lives having veered in wildly different directions, the two 47-year-olds finally plan to marry.
Their wedding is likely to be held inside the forbidding whitewashed walls of the southernmost lock-up in the mainland United States.
Jenai is worth some $20million. She and her four children —aged 10 to 13 — live in an idyllic $800,000, 5-bedroom house, a couple of blocks from Mt. Tabor Park in Portland, Oregon.
She made her fortune from her part in building the CrossFit exercise regime and then divorcing the company's co-founder, Greg Glassman.
Home for the man she plans to call her husband is a stark cell inside the Monroe County Detention Center on Florida's Stock Island — right next door to Key West. He has been there for 17 months, awaiting trial for a drug-connected murder.
If found guilty he may never see life outside prison again.
But despite that threat, Jenai insists that she will not demand a prenuptial agreement from a man with a history of assault, drug and gun charges in his past.
'A prenuptial would be inappropriate,' she told DailyMailTV. 'It would feel like there is a lack of trust in the relationship and I don't have any trust issues with Ty.
'Anyway, I don't hold on to my wealth tightly. I don't feel overly protective of the money that I have.
'I feel essentially that money is to help somebody who is in a terrible situation and I am fortunate to have the means to do that.'
The couple write love letters to each other, and in this one Tucker said: 'There will never be any other woman in this world more beautiful to me than you are… you don't just turn me on, I look at you and my heart just completely melts'
Tucker paints in prison and collects inmate art, sending Jenai these hand made flowers made out of toilet paper. She calls them 'beautifully colored and really creative'
Jenai and Tucker hadn't spoken in years when they reconnected on Facebook a few years back. Both were then living in Arizona, about 20 miles apart. But even then they didn't meet.
Instead, Tucker set off - on foot - for Key West, a move that landed him in his latest trouble.
Living in a warehouse squat he allegedly got involved in what became known as the 'tree house murder,' a sordid tale that ended in one death, one cutthroat injury, and murder charges against Tucker and two other men.
Prosecutors admit there is no physical evidence that ties Tucker to the killing, it is only the words of his co-defendants and an alleged jailhouse confession.
Tucker himself says he was so drunk on the November 2017 day Matthew Bonnet was stabbed to death that he remembers virtually nothing.
But Jenai's offer to pony up $1million to bail him out of jail and have him live with her, 3,500 miles away on the other side of the country, was turned down by a judge in January.
'Part of the reason that I got so deeply involved is that on reading the reports of the crime and his involvement, the dots weren't connecting — something was off,' Jenai told DailyMailTV.
'It is not in his character whatsoever to be in that situation
'The more I saw, the more I felt something was very, very wrong. I couldn't see why he was arrested even.'
She got involved after a mutual friend told her that her schoolyard crush was in trouble. 'I wrote him a letter and gave him my phone number, to make sure he knew there was someone there for him,' she said.
Jenai admits that her decision to marry Tucker makes no sense to others, but says 'at the end of the day I love spending time with him, I love talking to him' and she enjoys the notes and drawings he sends
Jenai saves all the letters, drawings and artwork Tucker sends her and says their wedding in jail will be the first time they have seen each other in person in 30 years
'I felt compelled to spend as much time as I could to make it easier on him and I also wanted to make sure he had good representation. He was kind of living a bohemian kind of lifestyle and didn't have anyone to look after him.'
They spoke several times over video. The jail does not allow any in-person visits.
The more they spoke, the more they realized they still had
