• Brandi Passante rose to prominence in 2010 when the first season of "Storage Wars" aired.
• She and her former-partner Jarrod Schulz separated in 2018, something her loyal fans only came to know in 2020.
• She continues buying and selling items from abandoned storage lockers and managing her shop Now & Then.
• Jarrod Schulz has moved on with his career and owns a restaurant called Rush Bar and Grill.
• She is not currently in a serious relationship, but is focused on her family, career and friends.
When the first season of “Storage Wars” aired in 2010, no one expected it to be as successful as it is today. However, becoming A&E’s top show in such a short time proved how much any audience loves to see other people risking all their money on national TV.
As expected, the show’s fame led its stars to reach international fame through it. One of the series’ most well-known faces is undeniably Brandi Passante, who alongside her partner Jarrod Schulz, completely conquered people’s hearts with their married-couple dynamics and own way of managing business.
Nonetheless, as “Storage Wars” went through a recent long hiatus, Brandi Passante’s fans were left with many open questions regarding both her personal life and her participation in the show.
So the gold questions are: what is Brandi Passante doing nowadays? Is she still active in the storage auction business? Are she and Jarrod Schulz still together?
If you want to know the answers, just take a seat and keep watching!
Contents
What Happened To Brandi Passante?
The return of “Storage Wars” to TV has been surrounded by a lot of speculation, not only regarding whether or not the show was permanently cancelled, but also about its cast’s whereabouts.
However, in Brandi Passante’s case, life has changed a lot since the show’s eleventh season’s finale aired in early 2019. The most important is that her relationship with her now-former partner Jarrod Schulz ended in 2018, something her loyal fans only came to know in 2020, when she revealed it during an interview with the Dad Diary on Facebook Live.
Regardless of the separation, Brandi’s social life hasn’t been negatively affected by it. Running a quick check on her Instagram account, it’s quite evident she enjoys spending her free time between friends and family.
When it comes to business, not even the hiatus of “Storage Wars” and the separation from Schulz stopped her in the slightest. Nowadays she continues buying and selling items from abandoned storage lockers, and also takes care of her shop Now & Then, something she does quite well while at the same time managing to be a single mother to two teenage children.
Nonetheless, that’s far from being the only important thing that has happened to Brandi recently. In late 2020, her father sadly died from complications related to COVID-19, a virus she and the members of her family also had to overcome while facing such a heart-breaking situation.
Hopefully things will improve for her and her family in the future. However, her fans can be happy that Brandi is part of the “Storage Wars” comeback to the TV set in April 2021.
What Happened To Her Marriage?
Brandi Passante’s separation from Jarrod Schulz was apparently a process legally simple, due to the fact that they never married.
However, that doesn’t mean the news of the two “Storage Wars” stars’ split wasn’t surprising. People often remember the former couple for their on-screen bickering, which always seemed to be playful and mischievous-free, thus to find out that the ‘marital’ problems between Passante and Schulz were indeed real is shocking to say the least.
What could have happened between them then? Until the 12th season of “Storage Wars”, the couple didn’t show any signs that their seemingly blissful relationship had come to an end. They often attended public events together for the show, and although they weren’t big fans of posting couple pics on their social media, it wasn’t rare to find them on each other’s Instagram feed.
Nonetheless, their most observant fans noticed that since late 2018 they didn’t post anything about each other on their social media, though neither Brandi nor Jarrod even remotely revealed what was happening between them. That, added to the prolonged hiatus “Storage Wars” was going through at the time, made it almost impossible for the audience to get a hint that the relationship was on the rocks.
Fast forward to the present, it’s already well known that Brandi and Jarrod aren’t together, but the real reason for their split remains a mystery.
Meanwhile, while the former couple seemed to have agreed on co-parenting, and while working together during the 13th season of “Storage Wars” their dynamic might be different, it’s unknown if they’re on good terms with each other off-screen.
What Is Jarrod Schulz Doing Now?
Since his break-up from Brandi Passante, Jarrod Schulz has moved on with his career and personal life.
Nowadays Schulz is concentrated on his restaurant – Rush Bar and Grill – based in California. The place is known for their live-concert ambience, and while it’s been in business since 2015, Schulz actually bought it in early 2019. If the bar’s website information section holds any truth, Schulz’ vision is for it to remain as a family-friendly place, without losing its trademark nightlife-like vibes.
To promote his business, Schulz posted many pics of it onto his personal Instagram account. However, starting from June 2020, the Rush Bar and Grill’s Instagram account took a long break from posting, leaving the actual status of the bar unknown.
Regarding his personal life, Jarrod has evidently moved forward as well. In early 2020, he made public his relationship with a Californian named Rochel Beckham, who is the mother of three teenage children, and has apparently also recently divorced.
Why has “Storage Wars” ended?
Actually “Storage Wars” hasn’t ended, and A&E is still interested in producing new seasons of it, as it’s been announced to air in early 2021. However, prior to it the show went through a long break that started in January 2019 following the end of the 12th season.
During the time the show was off-air, a lot was speculated about its future, and it didn’t help that A&E wasn’t too keen about revealing what would happen to it. Later in mid-2020, loyal fans almost entirely lost theirs hopes of seeing the return of “Storage Wars”, when during an interview with the website TV Shows Ace, the long-time show’s stars Casey and Rene Nezhoda affirmed that the network had “moved on” from it, and were more interested in producing other type of series at the time.
It’s unknown if the Nezhodas really didn’t know about “Storage Wars” returning at that point, or if their words were meant to disorient fans to make the series’ comeback a surprise. Either way, in October 2020 the cast started filming the show’s 13th season, though that information wasn’t disclosed until February 2021, when the website Starcasm reported about the possible return of the show, following an interview Brandi Passante did with the online show “Spirit Talk”, in which it was hinted that “Storage Wars” was one of her current projects.
For once the speculations weren’t wrong, and in the end, fans of the show were happy to know that their requests weren’t ignored, and “Storage Wars” was finally returning to TV after two years.
Who Is Brandi Passante?
She rose to prominence in 2010 when the first season of “Storage Wars” aired. However, there are many things people don’t know about Brandi Passante, such as the fact she’s from Texas, that her middle name is Leigh, and that her birthdate is 16 May 1980.
Besides that, Brandi has affirmed that she didn’t always take part in her family business. As she told MyLifetime.com in 2013, she initially stayed home to take care of her children, while her then-husband, actually partner Jarrod Schulz took care of anything business-related. Though as she affirmed, her inability to provide for her family herself in addition to feeling a lack of improvement in her career led her to feel emotionally down, ‘it was very difficult for me. I love my kids, but I felt alienated and depressed’. Brandi followed up by saying that despite the fact working and managing her Now & Then store took a lot of her time, it made her feel better as a mother, regardless of the struggles that raising her kids while being so busy entailed.
Her Career On TV
The story of how Brandi Passante debuted on TV is simpler than one could imagine. She and her former-partner Jarrod Schulz were first approached by A&E’s producers during an auction. While the initial proposal was to appear in a series, they didn’t think it would lead them this far, never mind to becoming famous.
A&E’s producers weren’t wrong about including Brandi in the series though.
She’s been one of the few buyers of “Storage Wars” to appear in each of its seasons, and in contrast to Jarrod, Brandi always appeared on-screen to be the level-headed, organized half of their team.
Whether it was for her logical business-mind or Schulz’ hasty decisions when it comes to bidding and buying, things almost always worked for them in the show. Their personalities were also the reason they were so well liked by the audience, something which not only ensured their continuity in the original series, but also led A&E to premiere in 2014 “Married To The Job”, a “Storage Wars” spin-off series focused on Brandi and Jarrod’s life inside and outside their business.
In the show, the then-happy couple dealt with issues regarding their business and family, and it also introduced the topic of their engagement and efforts to plan an affordable wedding. However, the series only lasted eight episodes, and the plot of their upcoming marriage was left forgotten, not only on TV but also in real life.
Although the project wasn’t too successful, it proved that the recognition she obtained through the show has not only given her fame, but also positively affected her career off-screen.
Family Privacy & Social Media
If you’re one of Brandi Passante’s hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers, you have probably already noticed how she manages her social media. It’s very noticeable that despite the fact Brandi is a very famous reality star, she likes to keep the majority of her personal life secret.
Considering that, it’s not surprising she managed to keep the news of her separation from Jarrod Schulz private for a long time. There are also other things she has hidden from the public eye as well, such as her kids’ whereabouts.
While it’s already been acknowledged that Brandi and Jarrod’s teenage children Payton and Cameron want to keep themselves out of the spotlight, Brandi has also revealed that the reason she refrains from posting pics of her kids on her social media, is because they had been harassed ‘by some creepy ass dudes’, she noted, on an Instagram post from early 2020.
Besides her protectiveness over the way her children are perceived online is understandable and admirable, Brandi has also managed to take full advantage of her social media for business.
— Brandi Passante (@Brandipassante) April 21, 2021
She has an active account on the website Cameo.com, on which her followers can pay a subscription to join her fan club, and even have the chance to send her personalized video requests.
Net Worth
Brandi Passante net worth is estimated at over $2 million, the result of not only her TV appearances, but also from the income she has received from the antique store Now & Then she has owned for over a decade.
Although the shop was founded by her former-partner Jarrod Schulz back in the late 1990s, Brandi played a big part in the opening of the business’ second location in 2013. However, despite that the store based in Orange County seemed to be promising, it actually shut down in early 2014 due to a lack of clientele.
Brandi Passante also receives income from Cameo.com, on which she has hundreds of subscribers.
Is She Dating Anyone?
After Brandi revealed that she and Jarrod Schulz were no longer together, people rapidly started questioning both of them about what caused such a sudden separation.
Although neither Brandi nor Jarrod have revealed the reason for their split, it’s easy to imagine it must have been a situation really difficult to end a relationship that lasted almost two decades.
Whatever the reason, it will most likely remain a mystery for quite some time. However, that won’t stop people from being extremely curious about Brandi and Jarrod’s respective relationship status.
Even if Jarrod was seemingly quick to find love again after the separation, it hasn’t been as simple for Brandi. As she told the Spirit Talk in February 2021, she wasn’t in a serious relationship at the time. Following her words, after the separation she was closed-off from finding herself interested in anyone, describing it as ‘sort of emotionally dead inside, you know? Kind of trying to find my place’.
While Brandi Passante’s current relationship status might change anytime soon, it’s quite evident that she is more focused on her family, career and friends. All in all, whatever the future has in store for Brandi, we hope life brings positive things to her.
