It wasn’t an instant “I do” for Julie and Todd Chrisley.
In a new episode of daughter Savannah’s Unlocked With Savannah Chrisley podcast, she revealed that her mom turned down Todd’s marriage proposal several times before saying yes.
Savannah says Julie was pregnant with their son, Chase, now 27, at the time, and was ready to raise the baby on her own had the pair not married.
“I think of my mom in her early 20s when she got pregnant with Chase, so my older brother, who’s 14 months older than me,” Savannah began. “My dad had just come off a divorce, he had two kids, and my mom was the preacher’s daughter in a small, one stoplight town in South Carolina – preacher’s daughter. Everyone knew everyone.”
She continued, “And she got pregnant, and she told my dad, she was like, ‘I am not marrying you. This is my baby. I’m gonna raise my baby. If you want to be involved in his life you can, but I’m raising my child.’ I’ve read parts of the book that he’s working on, and I was just sobbing, just because he talks about the first time he saw my mother, how he felt, how he would just go into the bank just to be able to see her, and she wouldn’t give him the time of day.”
Julie, who was weary of Todd’s past as a divorced dad with two kids, was adamant about not marrying her now-husband of 20-plus years.
“She told him, she was like, ‘I’m not marrying you, just for you to make the same mistake you made with your first wife,'” Savannah shared. “He asked her twice, and she told him no. And now, look at ’em, 27 years later.”
Being pregnant before being married played into Julie’s decision as well, with the couple ultimately deciding to tie the knot on May 25, 1996, just days before Chase was born.
Savannah added, “But, like she said, small town, your father being the preacher, getting pregnant out of wedlock. And they got married May 25. Chase was born June 1.”
The couple, who are currently serving separate sentences for tax fraud following their conviction last year, would go on to welcome Savannah, 25, in 1997 and Grayson, 17, in 2006. Todd is also dad to Lindsie, 33, and Kyle, 32, from his previous marriage.
As for Savannah, she’s putting marriage on the back burner for now.
“It’s so hard, because in the South, too, you experience this [viewpoint] like, ‘You should be married. You should have kids,'” the reality star, who was previously engaged to longtime boyfriend Nic Kerdiles, said during a previous episode of her podcast. “[But] I say the thought of marriage scares me more than kids.”
“I don’t know if it’s maybe – and this is gonna sound so bad – but I think maybe because kids, you’re in control of, you know?” Savannah suggested. “So if I were to have a kid, it’s my responsibility to take care of them and make sure they get from point A to point B.”
“But with marriage, it’s kind of like you’re giving over a part of yourself to someone,” she added. “So they have the ability to hurt you.”
Savannah added of marriage, and that feeling of having to give up a degree of control, “It’s a weird thing I’m still trying to figure out in my mind.”
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