HGTV’s Jen Hatmaker is happy and in love with boyfriend Tyler Merritt after her marriage to Brandon Hatmaker ended due to infidelity.
In September 2025, Jen revisited her divorce in her memoir, Awake, which addressed Brandon’s cheating scandal and their subsequent split. The former couple were married from 1993 to 2020. Before their breakup, Jen and Brandon, who share five kids, appeared on HGTV’s My Big Family Renovation in 2014.
Jen moved on in the wake of her divorce with Merritt, whom she met in 2021.
“Community, you have gone with me through the suffering … So of course you get to know about the surprising return of love,” she wrote via Instagram in 2022. “I didn’t need Tyler to heal my broken heart. Me and Jesus did that on our own. He isn’t a missing piece. I am whole. So is he. I am learning what it looks like when two whole, healthy people fall for each other without the pressure of fixing or ‘completing’ the other.”
Jen Hatmaker and Brandon Hatmaker surprised HGTV viewers with news of their divorce — and their split has only gotten messier amid cheating claims and their separate departures from church. Many of Us were introduced to the reality stars when their show, My Big Family Renovation, premiered in 2014. Before the short-lived series, Jen and […]
The former reality TV star started dating Merritt two months after they met — despite the distance between them.
“Oh you guys. The FaceTimes that lasted until 2:00am, the endless texts all day every day, the absolute shock of falling in love again. We went completely bonkers for each other,” she added. “We met randomly in New York at the beginning of November. He was there to lay claim to life. I was there unknowingly stepping into the story. He is now so impossibly important to me, so miraculous, I could just throw my head back and laugh every time I think of him.”
Tyler Merritt, Jen Hatmaker Courtesy of Jen Hatmaker/Instagram
She continued, “We spent this weekend in New York, where it all started over French fries, honey mustard, and Waitress.”
In an anniversary post, Jen elaborated on their meet-cute, writing via Instagram in 2023, “I remember so much about that night, small details. Not the least of which was walking toward him at the Renaissance before our show, shocked at how he sort of took up the whole room. I didn’t know. I wasn’t ready.”
Merritt has had experience in the spotlight as well. In addition to being a comedian and creator of The Tyler Merritt Project, he has appeared in Messiah, Outer Banks and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
In 2020, HGTV star Jen Hatmaker and ex-husband Brandon Hatmaker made headlines for their split, which came alongside accusations that he had been having an affair. Now, five years later, Jen has dove into the cheating allegations in her memoir, Awake, while Brandon has broken his silence on the scandal, admitting that he had been […]
The actor has written several books including the 2021 memoir I Take My Coffee Black. Merritt previously opened up about being diagnosed with liposarcoma — a type of soft tissue cancer — and how that led to him getting a 28-pound tumor removed in 2020.
“The smile in this picture is finding out that the Cancer left in my body hasn’t grown,” he wrote via Instagram in April 2025. “That’s good news. In fact, it’s the best possible news.”
Jen’s ex Brandon, meanwhile, is married to wife Tina Hatmaker. After Jen resurfaced her side of the story about their divorce, Brandon defended his relationship with Tina.
“Jen and I intentionally delayed finalizing the divorce for mutually agreed-upon reasons. None of those reasons had anything to do with giving the marriage time to reconcile. It was at Jen’s request to delay the divorce and I agreed,” he wrote via Substack in September 2025. “For those who read or believe the narrative that I remarried too quickly… The fact is that Tina and I got engaged two years later in July of 2022 and married the following December. And I’ll say it again: Tina may have saved my life. Not figuratively, but literally.”
