Emma Roberts and Garrett Hedlund’s son was five years old when he walked his mother down the aisle at her wedding to Cody John in July 2026. Most of what has been written about him since he was born concerns the adults around him. Here is what is actually documented about Rhodes himself.
Rhodes Robert Hedlund called it the “Roundhouse Express.” That’s the gondola that carries guests up the mountainside in Sun Valley, Idaho. By Emma Roberts’ own account, that’s what the five-year-old kept repeating, unprompted, the whole way up to her wedding in July 2026. She was already dressed for the ceremony. Cody John, the man she was about to marry, sat on Rhodes’ other side.
Roberts announced she was pregnant in August 2020, and Rhodes was born that December. Tabloid sources had his name before she confirmed it herself.
| Full name | Rhodes Robert Hedlund |
| Born | 27 December 2020, Los Angeles |
| Parents | Emma Roberts and Garrett Hedlund |
| Godfather | Tim McGraw |
| Age now | 5, turns 6 in December 2026 |
Table of Contents
Where the name Rhodes actually came from
Roberts introduced her son to the world on 12 January 2021, with a single photo posted to Instagram. “Thank you 2020 for getting one thing right,” she wrote. “Our bright light Rhodes Robert Hedlund.”
The name came from Hedlund, known for Tron: Legacy and Mudbound, who chose it himself and explained his thinking in an interview on the Today show that August.
“My father, before he passed away, we had a three-week road trip and so it was roads,” he said. “And my grandfather and I used to go on rowing trips, so ‘Row’ for short, and then Emma and I are avid readers, so Rhodes scholar.”
Then, in the same breath, he undercut the whole explanation: “But really, it’s just rodeo.”
The middle name gets less attention, though it follows the same logic. Robert is not a name pulled from either family, at least not according to anything either parent has said publicly. It matches Emma’s own surname, Roberts, minus the final S, so both parents end up written into the same name. Neither Roberts nor Hedlund has explained it that way in an interview.
Rhodes already had a godfather by February 2021, weeks before Hedlund gave that August interview about the name. He had gone on The Kelly Clarkson Show and said that Tim McGraw, his co-star from Friday Night Lights and Country Strong, would take on the role. McGraw cut him off before he could finish asking. “I’m the godfather,” he said.
What happened after Emma Roberts and Garrett Hedlund split
Roberts and Hedlund had been together since March 2019. They split just over a year after Rhodes was born. People reported the news in January 2022, quoting a source close to the couple: “It’s sad, and they are trying their best to co-parent. It’s been hard.” Neither Roberts nor Hedlund has said publicly, in any detail, what led to the split.
Roberts went on to date actor Cody John. The co-parenting side of things appears to have worked out too. Hedlund has stayed involved in his son’s day-to-day life. In one interview, he could name the two goats at Rhodes’ old nursery, Honeycomb and Daisy. In October 2025, Roberts took Rhodes to Universal Orlando on her own. Three months later, for what she called a belated fifth birthday trip, Hedlund joined them there too, and both parents posted about the day separately.
The short list of what Rhodes is actually like
Strip away the wedding and the split, and what’s known about Rhodes personally is short enough to list:
- For a stretch as a toddler, he said “no thank you” to almost everything, a habit Roberts brought up on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, calling him “the rudest polite kid I’ve ever met.”
- He has a stuffed bear named Honey Bear that goes with him most places.
- Garrett has said that Rhodes watched him get hit by a car during a stunt scene on his 2025 film, Barron’s Cove, and laughed until he could not stop.
- And there was the gondola ride to his mother’s wedding, when he named it himself.
His part in the wedding
Roberts married Cody John on 25 July 2026, at his family’s home in Sun Valley, Idaho. Rhodes walked her down the aisle, holding her hand, while an instrumental version of “Moon River” played.
Coverage of the wedding mostly stayed on the venue and the guest list. Rhodes turned up mainly in photographs, without much said about him specifically. There’s no reason to think that changes soon. Most of what gets written about him will likely keep being written about his parents, with his name attached. The gondola ride is one of the rare exceptions, a few seconds of a five-year-old saying exactly what he thought, out loud, on a day built around everyone else.
