Janay Rice Reveals More About Fight That Led to Ray Rice Assault on Valentine's Day 1 Year Later
Almost a year and a half after their violent elevator fight, Ray Rice and his wife, Janay Palmer, are speaking out about the night that made them infamous.
According to New York magazine, Janay is finally revealing what led to Ray knocking her out on Valentine's Day in an Atlantic City elevator.
The wife and mother-of-one claims that Ray's main focuses were all about NFL instead of taking care of home.
"Football came before everything and everyone," Janay admitted. "It was definitely frustrating. It was hard knowing I wasn't his first priority," Palmer told the magazine.
According to the new wife and mother, things got worse after she and her husband welcomed their first child -- a baby girl named Rayven. Palmer admitted to sleepiness nights and said that she felt like she was all alone as her man focused on football.
"I felt I was doing everything by myself," Janay said. "After a while, I resented that. I felt like a walking zombie. I told Ray he needed to change more diapers."
As the relationship spiraled out out of control, Ray revealed that he would make excuses to stay away from home, even booking more events.
"I get home, I'm spent," Ray confessed. "There's no time to talk. 'I got practice the next day.' "
Communication went out the door and things didn't get any better.
"It got to the point where if she had an issue, I would basically just go silent," Ray explained. "There wasn't a lot of yelling, screaming, nothing. I would just wake up, go to practice. Then game day gets here. I'd rush for three touchdowns. The family's over at the house. She's still got that problem she's thinking about. And I think, I scored three touchdowns today. Everything's all right."
"That's not what a man does," Janay remembers telling her now husband, who was, at the time, her fiance. "I know what a man is supposed to be. I know how a man acts in a relationship. I know what a father is. I experienced it."
As to what led to Janay being knocked out by Ray, she claims the fight started after she wanted to spend some alone time with Ray, who had other plans -- like hanging out with his half-brother and others at the Revel Casino.
"It was an annoyance to me," Janay admitted. "I was a little perturbed, though I didn't communicate that to him."
Janay revealed that she was silent as the couple took the long ride to Atlantic City, but after a couple of drinks, things escalated.
"We were drunk and tired," Janay claims.
And that's when the world saw the horrific footage of Ray knocking out his fiancee.
"Ma, I made a huge mistake," Ray claims he said in a text message sent to his mother. "I'm probably going to go to jail tonight."
The rest was, and is still, history. Now Ray is praying that he can join a NFL team in 2015, after winning his appeal and after being fired from the Baltimore Ravens.
Ray also is learning to love himself again.
"I'm learning to love myself," Ray said. "It's unfortunate that it took this situation for me to face myself."
"There will always be pain," Janay thinks. "He's figuring out ways to cope with it."
"The hardest part for me was people who don't know me at all were writing about me or talking about me. I understand the seriousness of what I did. But I'm like, 'Man, they just don't know who I am,'" Ray explained.
Janay admitted that it's hard being the wife of a celebrity in the public eye. She was quoted as saying, "Being in a relationship with a celebrity is hard. Everything is about them."