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Ree Drummond shares 'grateful' message over foster son Jamar's big accomplishment

The Food Network star gushed about her 18-year-old foster son, Jamar, who is making some big moves into college football.
/ Source: TODAY

Ree Drummond is celebrating a huge accomplishment for her son Jamar: officially signing to play football at the University of Central Oklahoma. The Pioneer Woman took to Instagram to gush about her 18-year-old foster son, who has been part of her family since 2019.

"Big big day!! This morning Jamar officially signed to play football at @ucobronchos starting this fall," the 51-year-old Food Network star wrote in the caption accompanying two pics. "I’m so proud of him and so grateful for his friends, coaches, and community for supporting him in countless ways."

The celebrity chef, who is also mom to Alex, 23, Paige, 21, Bryce, 18, and Todd, 17, then went on to continue her list of gratitude, extolling the virtues of Jamar that she is most proud of. She wrote, "And I’m grateful for Jamar himself — his hard work, his commitment, and his presence in our family."

In the first photo, we see Jamar and his foster mom posing, smiling ear to ear with their arms wrapped lovingly around one another. In the second snap, it's a bit more candid, with the future football star sandwiched between his parents getting a pat on the back from dad Ladd Drummond.

"I love the second photo; it’s pre-pat-on-the-back from Ladd, but it sure conveys our joy," she explained. She ended her sweet caption with a cheer, and a joke: "Go Jamar, and #ROLLCHOS! (Is someone choppin’ onions in here?"

Ree Drummond and her husband congratulate their foster son Jamar as he signs a document.
Jamar signs to play football in college.Ree Drummond / Instagram

In November 2020, Drummond for the first time revealed that her family included Jamar, who had been living with them for over a year and a half by then.

“Now I had a cooking show and other little elements of public life, and because of rules and regulations with the state agencies, I wasn’t able to share about Jamar,” she told TODAY co-anchors Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb at the time. “I felt very protective of him when he first came to live with us. So I didn’t want to kind of just thrust him out there.”

As time went on, Jamar felt left out.

“After a while, Jamar was like, ‘OK, I feel like I’m being hidden from the world.’” Drummond recalled. “So when he turned 18, I did write about him in the book. And I shared the essay with him before the book was published to make sure he was OK with it.”

As Savannah mentioned during the interview, Jamar seems "to just complete” Drummond’s family.

“He really does, in so many wonderful ways,” she responded. “He and my younger son, Todd, who’s 16, are actually just the best of friends. And then Jamar and Bryce are peers, they play football together. … Two or three years ago, if someone had told me I would be a foster mother, I couldn’t have predicted how that would have unfolded.”