Alexis DeJoria

Alexis DeJoria started dating television personality and motorcycle customizer Jesse James and became engaged in September 2012. They married about six months later on March 24, 2013, in a very extravagant and expensive ceremony. She has a daughter, Isabella (born 2003), from a previous relationship.

Alexis DeJoria was born on September 24, 1977 in Venice Beach, California to John Paul DeJoria and his former wife Jamie Briggs. In 1993, John Paul married Eloise Broady, a former Playboy playmate. Alexis has four half-brothers: John Anthony DeJoria, Michael DeJoria, Justin DeJoria, and John Paul DeJoria II and one half-sister: Michaeline DeJoria by her father, and one half-sister, Chloe Briggs, by her mother.

Alexis DeJoria was 16 years old when a friend took her to the famous Pomona drag strip in California, thus introducing her to the wonderful and exhilarating world of competitive racing. It was love at first sight. She began taking lessons and prodigiously made her way through the NHRA’s non-professional sportsman classes.

She made her foray into the professional NHRA circuit in 2005, initially driving a Super Gas car, but later switching to a rear engine Super Comp dragster. She was an immediate success. Within eight months of her stepping foot on the racetrack for the first time, she had appeared in the final rounds of two competitions and was the winner in one, the Sportsman Nationals in Fontana, California.

Her success made her bold and ambitious, and her desire to race in faster and louder automobiles was ever-present. She transitioned to the Top Alcohol Funny Car (TAFC) category, and for the next two years, predominantly competed on the west coast, being a member of a two-car team.

In 2009, she initiated a major turning point in her career by setting up her own team, Stealth Motorsports. She was their co-owner, chief executive, and star racer for three years, advancing to the finals of four national events, winning a divisional event, and recording her first victory at the NHRA national event in the TAFC category. DeJoria is the second woman ever to earn the last accolade.

She spent a year in training before making the leap to the Funny Cars category at the 2011 Texas Fall Nationals. Leaving Stealth, she joined Kalitta Motorsports, a Michigan-based team run by iconic drag racer Connie “The Bounty Hunter” Kalitta.

She has been involved in two major accidents in her 12-year-long professional life. In 2009, she was racing alcohol funny cars at a drag racing event in Englishtown when her parachutes tore apart the rear end of the car, spraying oil all over her brakes. She hit the sand trap at 130 mph and went through two safety nets before stopping at the fourth row of sand-filled plastic barrels. Fortunately, she escaped the incident with little to no injuries.

She was not so lucky on July 31, 2016 at Sonoma. During a race against John Force, her Camry slammed hard against the left retaining wall. She was taken to the Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa where it was revealed that she had suffered a high-energy fracture of the left pelvis. However, she did not need surgery and was discharged on the same day.