Jason Aldean talks about his public cheating scandal, divorce for the first time

One day before walking CMA Awards’ red carpet by himself, Jason Aldean opened up to ABC’s Robin Roberts about his tumultuous year — which included a public cheating scandal and divorce.

“When you have to deal with all that stuff in public, I mean, it’s hard to — it’s hard enough to deal with it in private,” Jason said.

Jason’s personal controversy began when he was photographed kissing a former American Idol contestant in a bar. The problem was that Jason was still married to his high-school sweetheart, Jessica Ussery.

“You know, obviously there were things going on in my marriage at the time where it just wasn’t really happy,” Jason said. You go out and you kind of let your guard down a little bit and things happen, and unfortunately… It’s tough… The best thing that could have happened that night was… They also took the pictures of me getting in a cab with my buddies.”

Immediately after the incident, Jason came clean on his Facebook page and said he was addressing it all with Jessica. Jason ultimately filed for divorce last spring, but said he and Jessica remain committed to raising their two daughters together.

“She will always be important to me because she is the mother of my children, and I know that we will both always make our daughters our No. 1 priority.”