NASCAR Love Triangle Puts North Carolina Swingers Scene in Spotlight

Tracey Hughes was already uneasy about her husband’s relationship with his fiery, red-haired boss. She suspected Clayton Hughes was seeing her, although he denied any affair. Then, while he was in the shower, a message appeared on his phone.

Sent via Snapchat by a woman whose profile picture showed a red-haired avatar, it read: “I hate when I wake up in the morning before you. I love you. And I had the worst nightmare about us last night.”

Tracey was shocked. Her disbelief soon turned to anger.

“I took the phone while he was still in the shower,” Hughes told Our News Outlet. “And I said to him: ‘Tell her her nightmare came true.’”

She was not speaking metaphorically.

Six years after that confrontation, Hughes was awarded $850,000 in damages from Jennifer Jo Cobb, a red-haired former NASCAR driver who remains one of the few women to compete at the sport’s highest level.

Cobb, 53, was still legally married to Eddie Troconis, who had served as the original crew chief for her NASCAR team. At trial, a private investigator testified that he had discovered Cobb engaged in what he described as “rambunctious” sex with Clayton Hughes, who had been married to Tracey for 17 years.

Clayton, 58, was the father of Tracey’s two sons. At the time, he worked as Cobb’s spotter—the team member stationed high above the track, using binoculars and a headset to relay race information to the driver. Their professional connection became personal, ultimately ending Clayton’s marriage.

A North Carolina jury concluded that Cobb had seduced Hughes’s husband and awarded Tracey substantial damages under the state’s controversial “homewrecker law.” The statute is often nicknamed the Jolene law, a reference to Dolly Parton’s 1973 hit about another woman pursuing a lover’s man.

Hughes, now 63, sees the irony in a woman with “flaming locks of auburn hair,” as Parton’s lyrics describe Jolene, being accused of taking her husband.

“Oh, Jolene,” she said with a laugh. “I know.”

North Carolina is among only four states where these kinds of lawsuits remain legal. Utah and New Mexico abolished similar laws this year.

In North Carolina, Mississippi, Hawaii and South Dakota, a spouse who can demonstrate that the marriage was loving and committed may sue the alleged third party. Claims can include “alienation of affection” and “criminal conversation,” the legal term for sexual intercourse. These cases are known as “heart balm” torts and are designed to provide financial compensation to a spouse who says a relationship destroyed their marriage.

Kyrsten Sinema, the former Arizona senator, is also facing a lawsuit from a North Carolina woman who alleges that Sinema seduced her husband while he was working as Sinema’s bodyguard. A judge rejected Sinema’s request to dismiss the case in September, allowing the litigation to continue.

In November 2025, a jury ordered 27-year-old TikTok influencer Brenay Kennard to pay Akira Montague $1.75 million after finding her liable for helping end Montague’s marriage to Tim Montague. Kennard, who is now married to Tim, is appealing the verdict.

In another widely reported North Carolina case, a judge ordered the mistress of trucking executive Donald Puryear to pay $30 million to his former wife, Carol Puryear, in 2011. It remains unclear whether the award was ever collected. Neither Carol Puryear nor her attorneys responded to Our News Outlet’s requests for comment.

The origins of these laws reach back to England, where a now-defunct statute allowed husbands to seek compensation from men accused of taking their “property”—a term that referred to their wives.

Critics argue that although both men and women can now be sued, the law, dating from the mid 1800s, is outdated and should be repealed.

Victoria Gillispie Hardin, founder and owner of Hardin Law Firm, said she often advises wronged spouses against pursuing the claim.

‘The only people who win in these cases are the lawyers,’ she told Our News Outlet. ‘Unless it’s a professional athlete, it’s rarely worth it.’

Gillispie Hardin said some may pursue the case to ‘make this other woman’s life a living hell.’

She added: ‘But I would say to her, rather than spending hundreds of thousands on an attorney, go take that trip of a lifetime, get that plastic surgery.’

Those caught up in the cases can find themselves ruined. Michael Freeman, 54, was sued by Brian McCoy after McCoy claimed his wife of a decade, Angela, left him amid a brief relationship with Freeman.

At the time Freeman was a courthouse deputy in North Carolina’s Iredell County, while Angela was a courthouse clerk.

‘I was introduced to Angela in March of 2004, and did tell Angela that out of respect for Mr McCoy, she would have to obtain legal separation papers before I would start seeing her,’ he said. ‘She got those papers on April 9th of 2004.’

Nonetheless, McCoy sued the following year, and in July 2011 was awarded $2.3 million in damages, which Freeman told Our News Outlet ruined him.

‘I wasn’t even invited to the trial in 2011 – and I didn’t know about the damages until four years later,’ Freeman said. ‘I brought a case against my accuser in 2015, and he then did not show. It was an extremely painful mess.’

Freeman, who claims he was never given a chance to defend himself, said the bank foreclosed his home, and Iredell County fired him from his job. He then was declared bankrupt.

Robert Inge, McCoy’s lawyer, told the Salisbury Post in December 2011 that the case was not about the money, but rather about making a point. Inge did not respond to Our News Outlet’s request for comment, and McCoy died in a hospice in April 2020, at the age of 48. Angela, now remarried and contacted by Our News Outlet, declined to comment.

Hughes, however, said the law was her salvation.

‘I am so thankful I lived in North Carolina,’ she said. ‘I would hate to have been on the floor of that bathroom for three months, broken and not been able to do something about it. You become very despondent. You stay depressed, you make irrational decisions, if you didn’t have a way to kind of fix it, get your pride back. I don’t know what I would have done.

‘It got me off the floor. And got me moving again.’

Hughes, born and raised in North Carolina, was working as a flight attendant for one of the big airlines, jetting all over the world, when she met and eventually married Clayton. She was 39 and gave up her work when she fell pregnant with their first son.

‘I really wanted to be home with them, and we could afford it,’ she said. ‘He was very hardworking. He always worked in NASCAR, but he also had a wholesale car business with his father.

‘We lived beneath our means, so never in debt. We took a vacation twice a year, our house was paid for – we also had a cabin in the Uwharrie Lakes, and a rental property. We lived very comfortably, but not fancy.’

As the boys got older, Hughes slowly started working again, finding a job within NASCAR, too, as a flight attendant for one of the teams.

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‘We both travelled for a living,’ she said. ‘He worked in NASCAR throughout our marriage. We were always on the phone. I knew where he was. I knew where he was staying. And when I was traveling for NASCAR, we would stay together – whoever had the nicer hotel. 

‘We had many great times together where we were away from the kids and could have a nice dinner and spend quality time together.’

Clayton often wrote his wife a stream of lyrical love letters and notes, dated and inscribed. They happily discussed renovating the lake cabin, with plans to spend their retirement on the water. 

Our News Outlet has reached out to Clayton Hughes and his attorney for comment.

He had worked as a spotter for NASCAR champion Martin Truex, before joining Cobb’s team. Then, Hughes claimed, things fell apart.

‘He stopped wanting me to come stay with him,’ she said. ‘He would say the hotel’s under construction. And then the next week, I’d say, “Am I going to come see you?” And he said, “well, the hotel’s under construction.” I said, “Again? Another one?”‘

In September 2020, when their sons were 12 and 16, Clayton said he wanted a separation.

Hughes asked him outright if he was having an affair with his new boss, and he denied it.

‘I knew she was having problems in her own marriage,’ said Hughes. ‘And she’s very flashy. She’s not like me at all. She does all these promotional things, talks a lot about women’s empowerment,’ she added, eyebrows raised.

Neither Cobb nor her lawyers have responded to Our News Outlet’s request for comment.

Tracey and Clayton decided to stay together until after Christmas, for the sake of their sons, but in October 2020 she found that fateful message, and immediately contacted divorce lawyers.

‘I was aware of the alienation of affection laws, but didn’t know anybody who’d ever been involved in one,’ she explained. ‘When I told my divorce attorney he might be having an affair, she said: “We’ll hire private investigators.”

‘I was scared to death to go down that road. I didn’t know what it entailed, because they wanted to put GPSs on his cars which really scared me – that made me very nervous – but that’s how you get the evidence. Even though he was having the affair, I felt like I was somehow betraying him. It’s weird, mentally, to change gears like that.’

The private investigators were careful not to share much information with Hughes, fearing she would give the game away, and she never confronted the cheating couple personally.

‘I was emotional,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t let on to my husband what they were telling me, as it would blow their surveillance and make their job very difficult. So they told me a little bit – yes, we saw them together – but not necessarily what they were doing, because I was still emotionally a mess, crying, broken, debilitated. They knew from experience not to tell me something that might really upset me, because I’d confront him. It would lose my case.’

By January 2021, Clayton filed for legal separation and moved out, and the private investigators had the evidence they needed.

By October 2021, Cobb’s husband Eddie Troconis had also evidently found out about the affair: that month he was charged with assaulting Clayton near a racetrack in Talladega, Alabama – ‘sucker punching’ him, according to Chief Deputy Josh Tubbs, and then kicking him in the back multiple times while he lay on the floor.

Troconis was sentenced to a year in prison in February 2023, local media and NASCAR sites reported. Clayton was left with significant injuries and required rehabilitation to walk again.

And when the Hugheses’ case finally came to trial, the letters and retirement plans were key for proving the sound state of the marriage, while the investigators’ files were crucial in confirming that Clayton and his boss were indeed having an affair.

The court heard from one of the private eyes who booked a hotel room next to the pair and described in toe-curling detail the sounds of their tryst.

‘People need to know that if you don’t have the evidence, you’re not going to win,’ Tracey said.

‘It’s one of the darkest places you can go – betrayal by your spouse – and it’s just so cruel and humiliating. We were in the same sport, so it was really humiliating. My passengers knew it, but I didn’t. I’m healed up now, but those were really tough days.’

‘I had $1,000 in my bank account when he left me,’ she said, worried first and foremost about her sons.

She had signed a prenup two weeks before the wedding, when she was pregnant with their first child and didn’t see any way to bargain with the document. Part of the divorce involved her suing for a greater share of their marital assets, including the three homes.

‘I was so scared I wouldn’t even have a place to live. It was during the COVID housing crisis. And I had a friend who was a realtor. We finally found a house because [Clayton] gave us a deadline to be out. I couldn’t find anything. I said to him, “I need more time.”‘

But what really inspired her, she said, was Clayton’s dismissive attitude.

‘He underestimated me,’ she said. ‘He told me I wouldn’t do anything, because, A, I didn’t have the money, and B, I was scared of her. And that really got me going.’

Cobb is currently appealing the judgement, so it is too soon for Hughes to plan how to spend the money.

Her sons are her priority, she says. Her youngest is a senior in high school, and her oldest now works as a private pilot: perhaps, she says, she will move to be closer to her siblings and mother. Hughes now is currently employed as a tour guide at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

But after the three-day trial in September in which she was awarded $850,000, her future finally looks bright, money or not.

She said: ‘I broke down in tears after the jurors left the room, because I’d been holding it in, and it had been five years. And the first thing that my lawyer said to me was: You’ve been vindicated. And I can tell you – that was better than the $850,000.

‘Because they had been going around telling everybody that they didn’t start dating until after we’d broken up. Just the audacity of that – and also telling my kids that. They were trying to make me look like a liar to my kids, like I was just out for revenge.’

And she has no regrets.

‘It kind of brought life back to me because I had a mission,’ she said.

‘It gave me a job to do, pulled me out of my grief, and I got my self-pride back. It gave me something to do where I wasn’t just rolling over and taking it.

‘I would hate to be in a state where I just had to take it and there’s nothing I could do. It empowered me. North Carolina gave me the power to do something about it.’