Convicted YouTube Mom Ruby Franke's Husband Kevin Asked Her to Stop Writing Him from Prison (Exclusive)

Kevin Franke was enamored with Ruby Franke from the moment he met her in August 2000.

After beating out five other guys who were interested in the pretty blonde, Kevin proposed to Ruby that October and married her that December.

In 2023, Ruby, 43, and the family’s therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, 55, were convicted after pleading guilty to felony child abuse involving two of Ruby and Kevin’s six children — with each sentenced to up to 30 years in prison.

Despite everything, Kevin says he still has feelings for Ruby, whose once-wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers brought the family fame and money — but also pain.

“I’m not ashamed to say that after being married over 20 years to that woman, I truly did and still do love her,” Kevin, 46, an engineering consultant, tells PEOPLE exclusively in this week’s cover story.

“But that doesn’t excuse what she did, and it doesn’t excuse how she hurt our children and how she hurt me,” says Kevin, who was never charged with a crime.

“There’s some bridges that you just can’t cross and then cross back. She burned the bridges, and so I’m moving on,” he continues. “And I’m going to do what’s best for my children, for my family, and for myself, and that’s not going to include her.”

For the first time, Kevin and his oldest son Chad, 20, are speaking out in-depth about their ordeal in this week’s PEOPLE and in Hulu’s three-part docuseries, Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, streaming Feb. 27.

In the docuseries, the couple’s oldest children, Kevin, Chad and Shari, open up about their Mormon family’s rise to social media stardom and wealth — Kevin says the family earned $100,000 a month at its peak — with Ruby’s now-defunct YouTube parenting channel about life with Kevin and their six children. 

By June 2020, the 8 Passengers account had 2.5 million subscribers and more than 1 billion views.

As much as she loved the validation the channel gave her, Kevin says, she ended it in 2022 after viewers and neighbors who were alarmed by her disturbing on-camera parenting alerted child protective services.

After that, she teamed up with Hildebrandt for the podcast, Moms of Truth.

Eventually, Ruby moved with some of the younger children into Hildebrandt’s home, where authorities in 2023 discovered two of the children emaciated and mistreated, which led to the women’s high-profile arrests that rocked the internet.

For more on Kevin and Chad Franke’s life with Ruby Franke, subscribe now to PEOPLE or pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.

Today, Kevin is in the process of divorcing Ruby, saying they are “close” to reaching a settlement. (He and Chad would not discuss the four youngest children.)

After Ruby entered prison, she began sending Kevin letters from the Utah State Correctional Facility where she is serving her sentence, he tells PEOPLE.

“The last letter that I received from her from prison was maybe in March or April of last year,” he tells PEOPLE. 

“And then I requested the Department of Corrections to ask her to stop writing me,” he adds. “I didn’t want to hear anymore. I didn’t like what she was saying.”

He refused to say what exactly was in those letters.

“I’m not going to share,” he says. “That’s between her and me. But it just didn’t feel right and it didn’t feel good, and I’m very angry. I’m still very angry.”

Attorneys for Ruby and Hildebrandt did not respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.