There was so much left unsaid between Savannah Chrisley and her ex-fiancé Nic Kerdiles before his untimely death.
“I truly was heartbroken, devastated,” the Chrisley Knows Best alum, 27, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “I had so many regrets of things I had said publicly, and things I wish I could have apologized for and just conversations that Nic and I never got to have.”
Chrisley began dating Kerdiles in late 2017. The pair got engaged in 2019 but they later called off the wedding and engagement in 2020. They officially broke up that September.
Kerdiles, a former hockey player turned realtor, died in September 2023 at age 29. His death was the result of a motorcycle accident.
Savannah remembers getting a call about the news as she was landing from a flight to Pensacola, Florida to visit her father Todd Chrisley, who is currently serving a federal prison sentence for bank fraud and tax evasion. When her friend delivered the new, Savannah recalls, “I was shaking and sobbing. I’m like, ‘I have to get home. I have to get home.'”
The Unlocked podcast host says she “kept texting him, and I was like, ‘Please tell me it’s not true. Please. You’re okay, right?'”
“The messages were going through. So, I was like, ‘Okay, maybe they just got it wrong. He’s okay.’ Because it was still showing delivered. And when I got there, I saw the news articles. So I was searching flights like, all right, trying to get home. Then, I was like, ‘I’ve got to tell [my] dad [Todd]. I can’t leave here without telling him,’ because he and Nic were best friends. So, I went and I told my dad. I walked in, and he just automatically knew, and I just broke down.”
“He knew something was wrong. And he was just devastated and heartbroken. And we sat there and we cried all day together. Chloe and Grayson were with me,” she adds, referencing her younger siblings, both of whom are under her care while Todd and her mother Julie Chrisley are in prison.
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The tragic moment occurred early into her relationship with now-boyfriend Robert Shiver. “Robert and I started dating [on] August 17th, 2023, and Nic passed away later in September,” she says.
“When you go and visit [people in prison], you don’t have phones. You’re not allowed any electronics. Before I went in, I just texted Robert, and I just said, ‘Nic died.’ That’s all I said,” she says. “Keep in mind, we had been dating a month and when that happened, Robert reached out to my publicist Alexa and my best friend Tyler, and was like, ‘Hey guys, how do I show up for her? I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. But just let me know if there’s anything I can do.'”
Savannah says Shiver, a former football player who now works at an insurance company, got on a plane and flew to Pensacola.
“He was there when I got out of visitation and he sent me a text and said, ‘Hey, I just want to let you know I’m here. I got you guys food, and I just want to get you home.’ And he took me and the kids home,” she says.
“I had pictures of that day of he and Chloe playing rock, paper, scissors on the plane. And when we got home I said, ‘I just want to go to where it happened. I just have to see it for myself,'” she says. Shiver drove her to the crash site.
“When we went to leave, we were standing at the stop sign, and Robert walks up next to me, and he goes, ‘Hey, do you mind if I say a prayer for Nic and his family?’ And in that moment, I was like, ‘This is the type of person you want to spend the rest of your life with,'” she says. “Someone who shows up for you, and shows up for you well, in situations like that.”
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“I mean, I’m also grieving the loss of someone that I loved with all my heart. As much as we went through a lot of s— together, Nic and I did,” she continues. “And after a few weeks, I told Robert, I was like, ‘I promise I will stop talking about it. I just have to go through my process.’ And Robert’s exact words were, ‘You weren’t my first love and I wasn’t yours, but we can be each other’s last.'”
Savannah notes that in that moment, she “just saw the emotional maturity in him and how he showed up, and how he could have easily ran.”
“This is a month into us dating. Just the way that he shows up on a day-to-day basis, and the type of father that he is, and how he guides people through every hardship and adversity. It’s just [he’s the] best friend [and] teammate that you want.”
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