It looks like Chilli got the stamp of approval on her new boyfriend from her own son! The TLC icon’s baby boy Tron Austin, 25, recently spoke out about his mom’s red-hot romance with Matthew Lawrence and gave it a huge thumbs up. “I just like seeing her happy, you know?” he admitted to People. “I wish them all the best and I think he’s a great guy.”
Tron, whom Chilli welcomed with famous music producer Dallas Austin, went on to say that his own long-term relationship has given him a better perspective on the rarity of a love match. “As someone who is now five years into my relationship, I love seeing humans connect and witnessing that genuineness. I feel that from him,” explained Tron, who married wife Jeong Ah Wang in December.
“We’ve only met a couple of times because they’re really building their relationship since she’s very careful about that kind of stuff,” Tron continued. He explained that his mom’s openness about the romance proves “that this is a very special person in her life.” The Family Legacy star added, “I do MMA and [Matthew] said that he recently started doing jujitsu, so we have some commonalities and stuff that we talk about. I’m really happy for her.”
As for the Boy Meets World alum, 42, he recently dished on his new girlfriend as well, calling her “really special.” “My life is in complete bloom right now,” he told ET on March 3. “I get to spend time with an amazing woman like Chilli. I’ve never gotten to be able to experience that kind of relationship before. She’s really, really special.”
The actor also revealed how the pair first met, saying they ended up chatting when a snowstorm put them on the same plane. “Really it was the flight talking and then afterwards saying, ‘hey, you know what? Let’s keep in contact,’ and it almost did not happen,” Matthew detailed. “Literally an hour before the flight took off, [the airline] said, ‘Okay, we got you on this flight. You gotta go.”
Matthew and Chilli, 51, took their romance public in January after they were linked together in August 2022 when they were spotted hanging out on a beach together in Hawaii. The beach hang came six months after news broke that Matthew had split with his wife of three years, Dancing with the Stars pro Cheryl Burke.
Cheryl appeared to throw shade at her ex-husband and Chilli just hours after they confirmed they were “exclusively” dating. “That was fast,” she wrote on her Instagram Story.