CrossFit co-founder Lauren Jenai’s fiancé freed on $2M bond

CrossFit co-founder Lauren Jenai has just gotten a wedding present she never imagined — her jailed fiance Franklin Tyrone Tucker is being freed on $2 million bond just before the couple was to be married in jail.

The 11th-hour bond deal has even brought Jenai closer with her ex-husband, she said — as he offered to chip in and help with a loan.

Oregon-based Jenai was in Key West, Fla., with her family this week to marry Tucker inside the Florida detention center where he’s been held for about two years awaiting trial on murder charges. But on Wednesday morning, a bond deal was reached with prosecutors that could see Tucker released as soon as Wednesday, Page Six exclusively learned.

“It’s a huge success and a long time coming,” Jenai told us of Tucker’s impending release. She was still hammering out the logistics, but, “once everything’s in place, he can walk out of the jail.” She told us the development was a total shock. “It’s shocking … I don’t know what I’m doing or saying,” she said via phone. “I’m happy.”

With Tucker out, she said that they’ll celebrate at a local Key West home she’s rented — and that they’ll then head back to her home in Oregon. They’ll still get married, she said, but, “I want him to come out and have a breath” before a proper wedding.

The couple were going to have their first-ever kiss inside the jail at the wedding: Millionaire fitness pro Jenai was high school pals with Tucker. They reconnected as adults on Facebook before he was arrested on first-degree murder charges in 2017 for a violent heist gone wrong, known as the treehouse murder. As she fought to prove his innocence, the relationship blossomed.

After his release, Tucker will remain under house arrest with an ankle monitor, but he’ll be able to leave the house for church, legal meetings or a job, Jenai said, and the terms are being hammered out.

Jenai told us that she and Tucker’s lawyers have been trying to negotiate a bond deal for a year-and-half. Initially, she’d said she would put up $1 million, but this week, prosecutors came back with a $2 million offer. (There were logistical issues since Oregon is a “no bond” state, Jenai said. The state does not have bail bondsmen or bounty hunters.)

As Jenai tried to get the money together, she even called her ex-husband, CrossFit founder and CEO Greg Glassman, she said. The pair had gone through a bitter divorce, but Glassman jumped into action to help his ex, we hear.

“We had a bad divorce, we’ve had issues,” she said of Glassman, who she added was “leary” of the relationship with Tucker. But she said that despite their divisions, she and her ex are now friends.

She said she called Glassman when she needed to get together an extra $100,000 to make the bond deal happen. “I said, ‘If you say no I understand,’ but 10 minutes later he was making it happen.”

In the end, she did not need the funds, but Glassman told her, she said, “‘I was going to do this … I hope I get love credit.’ It was really cute.”

Jenai reportedly sold her CrossFit shares for up to $20 million as part of her split from Glassman in 2013.

Reps for Jenai and Tucker said that they hope the bond deal is the first step in having the case against him tossed. The prosecutor in the case was recently changed after Tucker’s team claimed there was a conflict of interest, which helped pave the way for the bond deal, Jenai said.

She and Tucker were going to apply to have physical contact after they married. The two were banned from video visitation for 100 years after Jenai “got a little risqué,” she said, during their virtual visits while Tucker was incarcerated.

Jenai is launching her new fitness brand, Manifest, in December.

The bond negotiation was begun and reached by power lawyer Robert J. Hantman.

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