NEED TO KNOW
The “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” star’s widower, Eldridge Toney, moved into a new home in February 2025
Toney told PEOPLE exclusively that their shared home reminded him of his loss and moving brought a “new start”
Anna Cardwell’s widower says living in the home the couple shared brought “constant memories” of his loss.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Eldridge Toney reflected on his decision to relocate more than a year after the death of his wife.
Cardwell died at age 28 in December 2023 after she was diagnosed with stage 4 adrenal carcinoma the previous January.
“When we moved into that place, that’s when she began the cancer journey,” Toney recalls. “And being at that house, it was just a constant reminder of the cancer.”
“Every day I would get off work, I would just go to my room and just pretty much shut myself out,” he continues. “It got to a point where it just, I couldn’t do it no more.”
Toney says the fresh surroundings of his new home, where he moved in February 2025, brought a positive change.
Courtesy of Eldridge Toney
“Moving to the new house was probably one of the best things I could have done,” says Toney, who appears on the current season of Cardwell’s mother’s series Mama June: Family Crisis. “‘Cause it was just like a new start and just like seeing new things and being in a new home. It wasn’t a constant reminder of everything.”
In February 2024, Toney opened up about finding the strength to go through his wife’s belongings that he’d previously left untouched.
“I haven’t been in the bedroom because everything was just how she left it,” he told PEOPLE. “The last night we were in the bedroom was actually the day before she had decided to go to hospice.”
“All those feelings that are tired with that room down there, especially with all her stuff being exactly how it was when we were there…,” he continued. “And it was just hard to go down in the room, and I feel like it was like one major thing that was kind of giving me anxiety about the house, but it kind of was in the same sense time.”
Courtesy of Eldridge Toney
However, Toney said he knew “it was time” to put away some of Cardwell’s things.
“We have two closets in the bedroom and I folded all of her clothes and put it in bins and a lot of other things that were important to her,” he shared. “I hung up her wedding dress and I closed the door.”
Toney added at the time that he wasn’t ready to sleep in their bedroom again.
“I am going to work towards it,” he said. “It’s a process but some days I’ll just go in there and lay down. I won’t go to sleep, but I just spent some time in there. I’m gonna keep spending more time in the room so that when I do make the decision to sleep in there, it won’t be so right in my face.”
Anna Cardwell Instagram
The couple started dating in 2017 following Cardwell’s divorce from ex-husband Michael Cardwell, with whom she welcomed daughter Kylee Madison in 2015. Cardwell was also mom to daughter Kaitlyn Elizabeth, born in 2012.
Cardwell and Toney married on March 4, 2023, in Wilkinson County, Georgia.
Toney opened up to PEOPLE about his grief days after the loss of his wife. “It keeps hitting me again,” he said. “It’s going to be a lot different.”
Toney added that the thought of “going back to our home with no Anna and without the girls” was “hard to process. It is going to be very lonely. It’s getting harder.”
Mama June: Family Crisis airs Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on WE tv.
