Savannah Chrisley Reveals Mom Julie Initially Turned Down Todd’s Marriage Proposal While Pregnant with Chase

Marriage wasn’t always in the cards for Savannah Chrisley’s parents, Todd and Julie Chrisley.

On the latest episode of her podcast Unlocked With Savannah Chrisley, the 25-year-old Chrisley Knows Best star revealed that Julie initially refused to marry Todd after getting pregnant with the couple’s oldest child Chase, now 27.

“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 shared. “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.”

Savannah said Julie was reluctant to tie the knot following Todd’s split from ex-wife Teresa Terry, with whom he shares daughter Lindsie Chrisley and son Kyle Chrisley.

“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,’” she explained.

Savannah added that Julie played hard to get from the start of the pair’s relationship. “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,” she explained.

“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 continued. “He asked her twice, and she told him no. And now, look at ’em, 27 years later.”

Savannah noted that her mother’s hesitations stemmed “from getting pregnant out of wedlock” after being from a small town where her father was the preacher.

Despite her initial reservations, the couple tied the knot on May 25, 1996 and welcomed Chase shortly after their nuptials on June 1 of that year. The pair are also parents to Savannah and Chase’s younger brother, Grayson, 17.

The reality star previously shared her own doubts about tying the knot on an episode of Unlocked.

“It’s so hard because in the south, too, you experience this like [perspective of], ‘You should be married. You should have kids,’” she said. “And I say the thought of marriage scares me more than kids.”

“With marriage, it’s kind of like you’re giving over a part of yourself to someone, so they have the ability to hurt you. It’s a weird thing I’m still trying to figure out in my mind,” she noted.

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The television personality also admitted in December that she feels the need to put her life plans on hold amid Todd and Julie’s prison stints.

“In my mind, I can’t move on with my life,” she told brother Chase’s fiancée Emmy Medders on Unlocked. “Until I know that they’re going to be there, I can’t get married. I can’t have a kid. … [But I know] they’re going to eventually one day get to be a part of it.”

Todd and Julie were sentenced to a combined 19 years in prison for financial crimes in November 2022. Todd began his 12-year sentence at Florida’s Federal Prison Camp Pensacola in mid-January on the same day as Julie started her seven-year sentence at Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky. They’re currently in the process of appealing their case.