Southern Charm's Danni Baird Opens Up About Ending Her Engagement: "I Just Wasn't Happy"

Southern Charm's Danni Baird was to be the next Charleston pal to wed when she got engaged to boyfriend Todd Baldree in July 2016. But just weeks before the two were supposed to tie the knot, Danni confirmed that she had ended her engagement to Todd in August 2017. 

Danni, who works as an artist in Charleston, recently opened up to The Daily Dish over the phone about why the couple ultimately decided to call off their engagement. "The main reason is I had temporarily moved to Greenville [in South Carolina] where his kids live and where his main residence is, which is about three hours away from Charleston. I just wasn't happy. I wasn't working. We had this vision that I would be able to do all this artwork, and it was just too chaotic. I couldn't," Danni explained. "His business schedule was just so crazy that I wouldn't know what we would do the next day. And I'm somebody that if I'm painting, I could be painting for 12 hours straight, and I won't look at my cell phone, I won't read an email. And he's the complete opposite, like he has to have his cell phone on him like all the time. It became a little bit obvious that he was too go, go, go, go, and I really didn't have an opportunity to do what I wanted to do. It wasn't for lack of character; it was just basically life circumstance." 

But Danni added, "When he's like 60, and I'm like late 40s, maybe we'll get married [laughs]. He's got to slow down."

Even though Danni and Todd are no longer together as a couple, they remain incredibly close. She even admitted earlier this season of Southern Charm that the two had gotten intimate a few times after their split. "I'm actually doing a painting for him right now. He and I are still very close. He's an amazing person. I adore his kids. I even adore his ex-wife. I have a massive amount of respect for him, and I always will," Danni shared. "Sometimes, you just have to own it. If it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be. I'm self-aware enough, I guess, to have been able to identify that, and he is also. But he is one of my best friends." 

Getting to this place after the breakup "wasn't easy," according to Danni. "It was traumatizing for a couple months. But you get to a point where you can recognize somebody's strengths, and you can recognize somebody's faults, and they're not your own. And I just value the things that I love about him, and I just choose to keep that close to my heart," she said. "Obviously, it was heartbreaking. It probably did take me a good four months to start talking to him again. But we were engaged. We were about to be married. It was a big jump."

What has really helped the exes maintain a close friendship following their breakup, Danni said, is just focusing on what they loved about each other in the first place. "I have a massive amount of respect for him, as he does for me," Danni said. "And I encourage anybody that goes through a bad breakup, hopefully you can just kind of really focus on the good attributes, not harp on the negative, because literally the negative will just age you." 

For now, Danni said that she hasn't been thinking about dating again just yet. "Honestly, I literally am focusing on my career. Unfortunately, with artwork, you can't rush it. Yeah, I've really just been focused on me. It was something I haven't been attentive to in a while. So I'm just embracing it," she said. "I feel like the day I don't think about it is when I'll meet that person. I don't care about dating at all."

Watch the so-called Breakup Bunch open up more about what it's like to date in Charleston earlier this season of Southern Charm, below.

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