There’s no truth to the rumor that Jennifer Wilbanks ran in The Kentucky Derby this weekend. But she did run in another incident 8 years ago.

WWW- Runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks cruelly ditched another fiancé over the phone eight years ago – after the pair had already picked out an engagement ring and went house-hunting, the man’s wife has revealed to The Post.

The woman, in describing for the first time the anguish her husband suffered, added that Wilbanks had balked at sleeping with him during the relationship, saying she wanted to remain pure till marriage.

Wilbanks sparked a costly national manhunt when she skipped out on current fianc̩ John Mason Рreportedly after he insisted on remaining chaste until their wedding day.

In the previous case of cold feet, “out of the blue, she just called [her previous fiancé] up on the telephone and said she had changed her mind – I don’t know why,” said the Blairsville, Ga., woman, now happily married to the man.

“She said she didn’t want to be with him and didn’t want to get married,” said the woman, who spoke on condition that her and her husband’s names not be printed.

Rumors have been floating around Wilbanks’ hometown that she had run out on at least one engagement in the past – but The Post’s source, a 35-year old hairdresser, was the first to reveal how the fleet-footed bride had fled before. Friends and other relatives of the former flame also confirmed the doomed engagement.

“They had picked out an engagement ring and put it on layaway and were looking at houses to buy together,” the former fiancé’s wife said.

“They never consummated their relationship,” the woman added. “She claimed she wanted to wait [for marriage]. He said he was fine to have sex, but it was her decision.”

When Wilbanks suddenly reversed course and dumped him, “He was shocked, and he was hurt,” the woman said.

The pair met eight years ago, when Wilbanks was about 24 and the Gainesville man was around 27, she said.

Mutual friends fixed them up on a date, and they became engaged after eight or nine months, excitedly telling pals they couldn’t wait to head down the aisle, the woman and other pals said.

Her then-fiancé didn’t think she had any emotional problems, according to his wife.

But “I’ve always thought any woman who would ditch him is insane – he’s the most wonderful, caring guy you’d ever want to meet,” she said.

As for Mason, who has said he still wants to marry Wilbanks, “I feel sorry for [him],” she said. “I don’t think she will ever find true love, and that makes me sad.

“I’m just glad she did [end the previous engagement] because we would never have met,” she said of her and her husband.

The former fiancé, who works as a contractor, refuses to speak about Wilbanks now because “he’s a Christian man, and he doesn’t want to bash her,” his wife said.

Gwinnett County DA Danny Porter has said he is considering prosecuting Wilbanks for lying to police after she hopped a bus across country, then called home from New Mexico and initially told authorities she’d been abducted.

The prior jilting isn’t the only trouble in Wilbanks’ past – she was arrested three times for shoplifting, including one bust for taking $1,700 in merchandise from a mall, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported today.

All the busts came between ages 24 and 25 – and the last one garnered her two weekends in jail, the paper said.