Believe it or not, the Teen Mom franchise and its stars have been around for more than a decade — which means many of their fans basically grew up alongside the women that the series follows! The stars have certainly changed a lot since we met them.
16 and Pregnant first premiered on MTV in 2009, and many of the girls featured on season 1 are still part of the show today. The first episode ever featured Maci Bookout‘s pregnancy journey as she and ex Ryan Edwards moved in together in preparation for the arrival of their son Bentley.
There’s been an awful lot of drama between Maci and Ryan ever since the show premiered. After welcoming Bentley in 2008, they got engaged in 2009 but ended things one year later in 2010. Ryan struggled with sobriety, leading to various fights, arrests, time in rehab and restraining orders, but both halves of the former couple eventually moved on and found new love.
Maci began dating Taylor McKinney in 2012, and they welcomed their first child together, Jayde, in 2015. Taylor proposed in 2016, and they welcomed their second child, Maverick, before getting married in 2016. Ryan went on to marry Mackenzie Standifer and welcome two more children: son Jagger and daughter Stella.
Other stars featured on season 1 of 16 and Pregnant include Amber Portwood, Catelynn and Tyler Baltierra and Farrah Abraham. After appearing in all seven seasons since the show’s debut, Farrah made a tumultuous exit from Teen Mom OG in 2017, claiming that the network fired her because of her work in adult entertainment. In September 2021, fans were shocked when news broke that she would be returning to MTV for another Teen Mom spinoff series.
Teen Mom 2 is also more than a decade old, having cast its stars in 2010 and premiered in January 2011. The original Teen Mom 2 stars included Kailyn Lowry, Jenelle Evans, Chelsea Houska and Leah Messer.
Of course, not all of the stars were here from the very beginning. In the later years of Teen Mom, the show began featuring people who were introduced long after their teens, like Bristol Palin, who was a teen mom but joined the show at age 27. MTV also drew backlash for featuring women who didn’t even have a baby in their teens, like Cheyenne Floyd, who welcomed her first child with Cory Wharton when she was 24, and Taylor Selfridge who also welcomed her first child with Cory when she was 25.
Scroll through the gallery below to see how much the OG stars of Teen Mom have changed over the past decade!
Source: InTouch
