Jayme Zazworsky-Opincar adored Michael Tait at the height of his fame with superband DC Talk. As fans have grappled with the fallout of Tait’s double life from paragon of upright Christian manhood to predator, she’s had to grapple with a broken heart.
Why? Jayme was Tait’s girlfriend. From 1997-1998, the two were a pair, with promises of marriage and kids.
“He felt like he was made for me” she told The Roys Report (TRR). “He really made me believe that I was someone he wanted to be with his whole life.”
On Feb. 23, 1998, their relationship came to a screeching halt when his father, the Rev. Nathel Tait, died. His son promptly ghosted Jayme and, according to alleged survivor Randall Crawford, went on a rampage of substance abuse and sexual conquests, visiting gay bars and kissing men for “shock value.”
That same year, Tait allegedly raped Jason Jones, and in 2000, Crawford said Tait forced himself on him.
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In 2005, Michael Tait (right) poses with alleged victim “Phillip” at a bar in Nashville, Tennessee. (Courtesy Photo)
Still, when Tait confessed on June 10 via Instagram to living a double life, Jayme was shocked by his references to “the unwanted touching of men.”
She had never seen Tait sexually assault someone. He had kept this activity hidden from all but a few, until TRR’s report on June 4.
Jayme did see how Tait had a habit of kissing both male and female friends. She wonders if she was a cover for the homosexual life Tait wasn’t allowed to live.
She also wonders if she ever knew Michael Tait at all.
Where it all began
Jayme was a high school student when she got a press pass to the June 1993 Creation Festival in Mount Union, Pennsylvania.
At 17, she wasn’t about to refuse a chance to hear the biggest names in Christian music: Amy Grant, the Newsboys, DC Talk, and Steven Curtis Chapman
“The first time I saw (DC Talk) they were trying to be like Will Smith, so I thought they were a little bit of a joke,” she told TRR.
But Jayme and her friends got front-row seats to view the band’s set. Afterwards, she spoke to Rick Denham, who coordinated DC Talk’s merchandise. She walked away with a T-shirt and a job offer as their new merch girl.
Rick Denham, DC Talk’s merchandiser),and Jayme Zazworsky-Opincar at Kingdom Bound Festival in 1994, where Jayme worked for the Newsboys. (Courtesy Photo)
She picked up marketing gigs with Audio Adrenaline, Jars of Clay, and the Newsboys, which gave her an all-access pass to the world of Christian music.
There were clear boundaries on the road—ones Jayme wanted to keep as a Christ follower. She was never allowed on the tour bus with guys. She didn’t drink alcohol. And she abstained from sex.
She also found she had a lot in common with DC Talk co-lead vocalist and songwriter Kevin Max.
“I was more drawn to Kevin’s personality. He’s a very, very, very funny guy.” she said. “Michael (Tait) is also really funny, but like the old dad. I didn’t get really close to him until I had slowly moved to Nashville and was of drinking age.”
With a marketing job on the horizon, 20-year-old Jayme left college early and relocated to Nashville in 1996. She was invited to hang out with Tait, who was a decade older than her, and his buddies.
“(Tait) just became one of my best friends,” she said. “Instantly, we just had so much fun. Him drinking definitely made me feel like it was probably not as bad as I had grown up thinking it was—because, why would this man do it if it wasn’t?”
The friendship group would regularly attend a ’70s-themed night club called the Have A Nice Day Café where they would get slammed on fishbowls of alcohol that tasted like Kool Aid.
“It was just a free-for-all,” she said. “It was just like; everybody just drank without even thinking about it. Everything I thought before in my life about it was almost like gone at that moment.”
Tait was always the ringleader.
“We literally would drink all the time, hang out, we would dance at the clubs, and then that’s usually where the kissing started,” Jayme recalled.
“(Tait) also kissed his guy friends, so I didn’t know how to take that.”
Jayme believed that she and Tait were just friends until he suggested it could be something more.
“One day, he said to me on the phone, ‘Wouldn’t it be freaking awesome if you were the one that God has for me?’” she recounted.
By July 1997, they were starting to date and sometimes he would call her his girlfriend in public. It was Jayme’s dream come true.
Meanwhile, Tait was at the height of his DC Talk fame. The band had just completed their 60-city Jesus Freak tour and partnered with Virgin Records in a landmark mainstream record deal. Behind the scenes though, Jayme said DC Talk members were talking about going on hiatus. She was excited at the prospect of having her boyfriend home more often.
Toby McKeehan and Jayme Zazworsky-Opincar at Kingdom Bound Festival in 1993, the first festival Jayme worked for DC Talk. (Courtesy Photo)
In retrospect, Jayme can see the early red flags. Tait was flaky and selective about when he called her his girlfriend. Some days, he would hold her hand, sing to her, and kiss her. Other days, he acted like they were just friends. Only a few people knew they were actually dating.
Their relationship was never sexual but built on a deep emotional connection, she said.
Tait still kissed his male friends when they went partying and Jayme would ask him about his homoerotic behaviour incessantly. But the idea that he was gay didn’t enter her mind.
“I’m like, ‘How do you want to be with a woman when you’re, like, kissing men all the time?’ I wanted him to figure out what in the world was going on,” she said.
Tait would act surprised and respond that such behaviour was normal when clubbing.
“Whenever I first asked about it, “The thing (he said) to me was, ‘Wouldn’t you and (your female friend) kiss?’
“And we were both like, ‘No. We absolutely would never, ever do that. This is the ‘90s!’”
Whereas Tait had been persistent in his romantic intentions, spending hours talking with Jayme about their future children, by the beginning of 1998, major cracks were starting to show. Jayme could see that her questions about his odd behaviour were creating a rift. Then Tait started cancelling on Jayme — even on double dates at the last minute — so he could hang out with other friends at a bar.
Jayme was still figuring out how to respond when Tait’s father suddenly died that February. Tait was the youngest of his seven children.
“I remember one of our last phone conversations was (Tait) saying, ‘I got a call, and at the beginning of the call, my dad was alive, and by the end of the call, he was gone,’” said Jayme.
“I just didn’t hear from him again. All I could think is, if I lost my parents, I would need (Tait) right now.”
Jayme told TRR she reached out to Tait’s best friend, Chad Chapin. He said Tait wasn’t talking to him either and to keep persisting. But she never heard back.
Jayme Zazworsky-Opincar was good friends with Chad Chapin, Tait’s best friend and drummer. (Courtesy Photo)
“It felt like a breakup,” she said.
Jayme’s then-housemate and longtime friend of Tait, who has chosen to remain anonymous, witnessed the fallout firsthand.
“When Michael cut her off, so to speak, she took it very hard,” he told TRR. “She used to come home and say stuff like, ‘One day we’re going to get married,’ or ‘I’m going to have his kids,’ and stuff like that. I believe she was truly in love with him.”
Her housemate had been cautious about the relationship when the two started dating. Jayme was young, and he was afraid Tait would break her heart due to his fame.
But, he clarified, “Not because I thought (Tait) was a bad guy.”
Looking back, he realizes how traumatized she was.
“When something like that happens, it changes who we are and affects every decision we make,” he said. “The way (Tait) manipulated (Jayme) is trauma and rejection, no matter how we are affected. (It) stays with us for a long time.
“I love Jayme and know how deeply she was hurt through all of this. I also love Michael and pray for him.”
To this day, Jayme can’t quite make sense of what happened.
Jayme Zazworsky-Opincar in 1996. (Courtesy Photo)
She started dating another man, but says Tait invited him out for a drink to sabotage the relationship.
“He said, ‘Michael says that you’re crazy and that I shouldn’t believe what you say,’” Jayme said the boyfriend told her. That pushed her over the edge.
“I’ve kept so many of his secrets,” she said. “I’ve done so many things for this guy. You know, I’ve kept my mouth shut and walked away happily, and then you’re going to take a person who’s wanting to marry me and put doubts in their mind?”
Despite this, Jayme still felt the need to remain cordial with her ex. They both still lived in Nashville and worked in Christian music, so would see each other at industry events or at church. She did everything in her power to avoid him, even shopping in a different neighborhood, but Tait would sometimes cross her path.
“He would still make rather personal comments, so the boundaries were definitely skewed for some time,” said Jayme.
“(In 2001) Michael and I were talking to (a couple) at church, and he made a comment about us having children like them—meaning bi-racial. I eventually just stopped going to church and just did everything I could to avoid places where I might see him.”
In another instance, she recalls Tait telling a female acquaintance she would be a “great wife,” in front of her. It cut her to the core.
“In that moment, I could see how it was so frivolous to him to throw those words around,” said Jayme. “If I hadn’t already known for sure, there was no doubt anymore that it was all talk, pretend, fantasy, lies, but nothing real.”
CCM superstar Michael Tait, then-lead singer of the Newsboys, performed on July 2, 2022 at Creation Fest in Shirleysburg, Pennsylvania. (Photo: Facebook)
The fallout
Jayme eventually moved on from the breakup and married someone else. Meanwhile, her feelings shifted from blaming Tait to blaming herself.
“I went from feeling like a ‘woman scorned’ to a naive, dumb girl who should have known better,” she said. Then EMDR therapy helped her to get some distance from Tait.
Instead of wanting justice, she feels pity, which seems to be a common coping mechanism for Tait’s victims.
“I then started to feel bad for him,” Jayme said. “He can’t be authentic. He can’t be who he is. I just focused on what happened to him, to get him to where he (is) and I felt terrible because I knew it probably wasn’t fair, whatever led him to this place in his life.”
She even wrote a letter to Tait back in 2002 as a form of closure. In it, she apologized to him, saying he couldn’t be his true self.
Years after Jayme had her heart broken by Tait, she burned her DC Talk merchandise and other remnants of their relationship. (Courtesy Photo)
Then she gathered her old photos, letters, and DC Talk memorabilia and burned them
Now when she infrequently encounters Tait, the sting is gone.
“One of the last times we saw each other was at a show, and we were writing notes on a napkin about a girl he was seeing,” she said. “He was saying she was just blah.
“Sporadically, I’ve read interviews over the years where he continuously mentioned ‘a girl that he could see being the one God has for him,’ but every article was a different girl. I realized that meant this is a cycle and that there were other females who had experienced the same pain and loss that he caused me.”
Jessica Morris is a music journalist, podcaster and author based in Melbourne, Australia.