How Jon Gosselin Found Lasting Love With Stephanie Lebo

Seven months before he proposed, Jon told E! that "her mother and my mother ask constantly" about when they were going to get engaged. "And I'm like, 'Can you just let me be? Let me be! You'll know when you know.'"

Sure enough, the couple's respective parents were on hand to watch Jon get down on one knee.

"Of course I said yes," his fiancée captioned a close-up of the sparkling diamond ring he surprised her with, asking for her hand in a private dining room at Willoughby's on Park, Stephanie's favorite restaurant in Wyomissing, Pa.

Not that they didn't have "a bit of an adjustment period" after they first moved in together in June 2023, Jon telling OK!, "Most of our arguments were about our kids not doing enough around the house. I don’t want to lie, I want to keep it real—life isn’t always perfect."

But it's a lot closer to balanced with Stephanie by his side. (Not to mention, she cracked to ET, "I'm not moving anything out of this house." If they break up, she teased, "I already told him, 'The house is so large, we have a fully furnished basement downstairs, with a bar. You can just live downstairs.'")

They first hit it off at a mutual friend's backyard barbecue in August 2021 and Stephanie remembered being the first to slide into his DMs afterward. A few days later, he invited her to join him right then for a drink and she went straight from the gym, "sweaty, natural-looking, curly hair, no makeup," she recalled. "And he adored me, I think."

Stephanie even let people think she was a friend of his daughter Hannah's on one occasion, lest they spill the romance beans prematurely.

"It was easy enough to just say I was an older college student," she said with a shrug. "He also respected my wishes, 'cause it's a lot, obviously." Before they met, she and Jon had spent "a lot of years invested in people," the former cosmetologist explained, "and I just didn't know where this would go."

As it turned out, it's going all the way to the altar.

And his kids Hannah and Collin gave their heartfelt blessing, with Stephanie telling ET in December 2024 that Jon's son wrote her a special message, telling his future stepmom that she's "the glue" in their family.

But while Jon's bride-to-be hadn't met his other six kids in person amid his ongoing estrangement from them, he revealed in July 2024 that Stephanie had been in contact with them and his ex-wife.

“I know that Steph has talked to Kate, and I know that Steph has talked to my other kids," he said on The Domenick Nati Show. "Just, like, through FaceTime and Hannah’s phone and stuff. Everything seems copacetic."

Jon acknowledged that "it might just be easier for them to talk to a third-party individual that’s totally integrated into my life.”

As for his ex-wife meeting Stephanie, he explained, "Kate sees this as a long term relationship and, you know, a marriage. Maybe she just wanted to know the woman that’s influencing her children."

And Jon told ET last December that all of his kids, estranged or not, were going to be invited to the wedding, noting, "The door is always open here."

Before their dad says "I do" again, see all eight Gosselin kids through the years: