When Chelsea DeBoer left Teen Mom 2 in November 2020, she had spent more than a decade sharing her life on the reality TV show and thought her time on camera was done for good.
What had started as one episode of the MTV show 16 and Pregnant, which the South Dakota native filmed as a senior in high school in 2009, turned into a career in the spotlight when she was cast on the spinoff. But toward the end of her time on the show, DeBoer says she began to feel “physically sick” when the cameras showed up to film her family, which by then included her husband, Cole DeBoer, her now 16-year-old daughter Aubree, and the couple’s son and daughter.
“It wasn’t about the camera crew,” DeBoer, now 34, tells Glamour. “It was my body rejecting it because I felt like I was ready to move on. At that point, I don’t think I could have imagined being on TV again.”
It was a scary decision. At that time, being a reality star was all DeBoer had ever known, and she and her husband had “no plan” for what they wanted to do next. But they were building a house together, and grew to love it, with DeBoer focusing on the design and her husband on the renovations.
DeBoer began to wonder, What if this could be their next act? So she decided to manifest it.
“I shot my shot and DM’d HGTV,” she says. “I still can’t believe that. One, that I would do that. That is not me, usually. And two, that it ended in all of this.”
A few years later, DeBoer is back onscreen—on her terms this time. That DM turned into an introductory call with HGTV, which led to the couple getting their own show, Down Home Fab, which wrapped its third season in May. DeBoer has become a rare phenomenon: a reality star who has completely changed her personal brand.