Craig Melton: Untold Facts About Glennon Doyle’s Ex-Husband

Craig Melton is a corporate salesman and former football player/model who is best known as the ex-husband of Glennon Doyle, author and activist known for her #1 New York Times bestsellers Untamed, Love Warrior, and Carry On, Warrior.

Melton and Doyle lived together for 14 years from 2002 to 2016, during which time they became parents to three children. Their chapters of love were what propelled Doyle to the pinnacle of bestselling fame.

While there is probably nothing that Glennon hasn’t revealed in her books about her relationship with Melton, Craig, to some extent, seems to have a lot to tell about his life too. Explore them all in the articles below.

Craig Melton Early Life And Education

Melton was born in April 1975. Although he doesn’t talk much about his father 0r mother, except on his parents’ days, it is known that Melton has a sister, Nicole Stracener. Also, something that is in the records is that he attended Braddock High School in Lake Placid.

After growing up, Craig obtained a BA in psychology from George Mason University, also the same institute where he completed his MSc in telecommunications management. At George Mason University, Melton also played for the men’s Division I soccer team.

Craig Melton Mostly Worked On Executive Level Business; He Is Now In Enterprise Sales

After completing his education, the Spanish-born soccer player worked part-time as an account executive for Savvis Communications in Herndon, Virginia.

He then became a Senior Account Manager at Windstream Communications Telecom in Herndon. Doyle’s ex-husband left Windstream in June 2004 and joined Deltek as Sales Director. He worked there for four years before moving to SpringCM, a DocuSign company, to work as a corporate sales specialist.

From November 2011 to December 2016, Melton worked again at Privia as an Enterprise Sales Specialist. The former husband of a New York Times bestselling author then became Vice President of Emerging Technologies at DecisionPoint Corporation. After less than a year there, he returned to work as a corporate salesperson, this time for Visible Thread.

Since February 2021, Melton has been working in enterprise sales at Prevail, a cybersecurity company.

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How Did Craig Meet His Ex-Wife, Glennon Doyle? 

Craig met Doyle on 4 July 2001 in a bar in Washington DC, USA, all day long. Craig was 24 years old at the time, and she was a mature model and semi-professional footballer.

Ex-husband and wife Glennon and Craig slept together on the first night they met and started “drinking and doing drugs constantly”, the Burke-born writer admits in her 2013 memoir, Carry On, Warrior.

Shortly afterward, Glennon quickly became pregnant, but she decided to bring the baby into the world. Craig offered to pay, but she refused, saying “I’ve got it”.

A few months later, on Mother’s Day 2002, the James Madison University graduate found she was pregnant again. This time, she made sure that she was not going to have an abortion.

“I knew I was going to have this baby, right there on the floor.” Glennon writes in her book “Soldier of Love. Soon she also gave up her addictions and all. The Ted Ex speaker immediately married Craig; at the wedding, she wore a rhinestone tiara and high-heeled shoes.

Of her marriage, Glennon says she married “a man I had known for ten clear nights” – in a ceremony held in his childhood backyard in Burke.

Craig Melton Had Three Children With Glennon

After the wedding, Craig and Love Warrior had a baby boy, whom they named Chase. The three settled in Fairfax, Virginia. Glennon then started taking Lexapro and became a preschool teacher.

In 2006, she and the footballer-turned-salesman had another child, a baby girl called Tish Melton, named after Glennon’s mother. Two years later, Craig and Doyle became parents for the third time when, in 2008, they had Amma, named after the author’s sister Amanda.

Craig And Glennon Remained Together Despite The Former’s Cheating

Doyle writes in her book that she and Craig broke up after the latter admitted to cheating on him during a therapy session.

The rift between Doyle and Melton came at a time when the former Momastery writer was about to make a major breakthrough in her writing career. She had just begun to receive unexpected reviews for her collection of essays, Carry On, Warrior.

Within a week, she posted them on Facebook, New York book agents started calling her, and soon 10 publishing houses were vying for the rights to her first book. Her book debuted at number 3 on the New York Times bestseller list in April 2013 and sold more than 200 000 copies.

But a week before Doyle Melton was due to hit the road to promote it, her whirling world came to a screeching halt after Craig confessed to cheating on her during their marriage.

Before that, they apparently had problems with communication and sex too. The best social media winner of all time additionally blamed Craig’s habit of using pornography and extramarital one-night stands. Doyle’s simmering feelings of resentment and discomfort with physical intimacy were also some of the factors.

Glennon writes that she and Craig did recover from it all – through anger, grief, self-discovery, so much therapy, and ultimately grace. Doyle chronicled the struggle of her and Craig’s marriage and how they temporarily saved it in her second memoir, Love Warrior.

In the book, she talks about her ex-husband’s infidelity, while the memoir itself ends with the Virginia-born Doyle and Craig standing on a beach against the Gulf of Mexico, renewing their marriage vows.

They Broke Up After Glennon’s Coming Out

Despite the deception and subsequent settlement, Doyle divorced Craig in mid-to-late 2016.

She did this by first sending her an urgent text message one afternoon that she had something very serious to discuss. The father of three describes the message as something like a 911 call, “like a code red”. He rushed home, wondering on the way if Glennon had cancer or if she had turned gay.

Although he was relieved to learn that it was not cancer, “a wave of sadness, confusion and anger” arrived when Doyle spoke to him about his sexual orientation. In addition to confessing to him, she also confessed to her relationship with Abby Wambach, a woman, celebrity, football player, Olympic champion, activist, and author.

Craig talks about this moment,

“I thought we had been doing things the right way. Both of us had been working on ourselves. We’d entered a phase that was supposed to be a new life for us. It was a shock. It felt like the end of the world.”

However, the dark-haired former model felt he had no choice but to accept his new reality. Glennon was ready to publish her second book. Craig was as understanding as he could be and now shares joint custody of the children with the Fast Company Queer 50 member.

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Craig Melton Is Friends With Glennon’s Current Partner

Craig, Abby, and Glennon are now the epitomai of a good life.

In fact, Melton and his ex-partner’s current wife Abby occasionally co-coach their children’s football team. Abby also has a warm appreciation for her wife’s ex-husband Craig. She says of the psychology student,

“Craig gave me the biggest gift in allowing me into the family dynamic,” says Wambach. “He gave the kids permission to love me.”

Wambach and Craig have even played together on the same adult soccer team. As reported, famous talk show host Oprah Winfrey was also among the first people Glennon opened up to about her confession and relationship with her current spouse Abby.

In fact, before going public with her sexual orientation and love for Vampaba, Oprah had told viewers, “Brace yourselves. The bloodbath is tomorrow. The next day, Glennon posted a selfie of her and Abby together on her Facebook page announcing her coming out, captioning the image,

“Feels like the world could use all the love it can get right now. So today, I’m going to share with you my new love. Her name is Abby. You might recognize her from soccer.”

Most of the fans of the Untamed writer supported her. Melton and Wamba announced their engagement in February 2017, posting a Facebook entry showing two very sparkly engagement rings. They married in May 2017.

Does Craig Have A New Wife?  

While Doyle couldn’t seem happier and more content with her new football coaching partner, not so much has been said about her male ex-partner Craig Melton.

Although she once revealed on Instagram that the father of her children was also seeing someone, she did not say who Craig’s then-partner was.

In any case, it now seems that the relationship could have ended a long time ago, as it has been a long time since Craig last talked about a romantic partner on social networks. Either that or the football coach is keeping his love life to himself.

Quick Facts About Craig Melton