The events that kicked off their season of The Bachelor began the year before, when the 2016 Bachelorette, Georgia Love, rejected Matty J in her own finale.
He was made Bachie for the following year, while Laura saw a TV ad with Osher, who was inviting people who were looking for love to apply.
“I had actually just come out of a really, really shitty relationship,” Laura told the Shameless podcast in 2019.
“At that point in my life, I was 30, so I was really hoping that was going to be my big relationship, and I felt like I put a lot of energy and effort into it, and I was just a bit exhausted afterwards.”
Her housemates helped her apply for the show, and she got the call some months later. However, she had never watched the show when she went in to film.
Changing her mind back and forth constantly, Laura had even told a producer she no longer wanted to do the show when she had a dream that encouraged her to change her mind.
“I woke up at 4am, and I called my sister and I said: ‘you need to get the eff over here and help me pack” she told Shameless.
Although Laura went in sceptical, she left very much in love with Matt.
However, not everyone was on board with them straightaway, with the public taking to runners-up Elise Stacy and Tara Pavlovic.
“We got a lot of challenges, especially when Tara went home, we got some death threats sent to us, we got a lot of awful messages on Instagram … I remember thinking ‘how on earth can our relationship survive this?’” Laura said.
“I think that’s just a testament, if you’re a real couple and you really love each other, you can get through those first three months of how volatile the public’s opinion is, people will come around,” she explained.
The two would go on to face more challenges, with Laura suffering a miscarriage in 2018 when she was 10 weeks pregnant.
“Pregnancy after miscarriage is weird and crazy and wonderful. It brings with it all the joy, but also a niggling anxiety that something might go wrong and the painful reality that it could,” she wrote for Kidspot after falling pregnant with her first daughter, Marlie Mae, just weeks after her miscarriage.
Although the pair had not made plans to marry before becoming parents, they did squeeze in a quick engagement before the birth of their first daughter.
However, Laura revealed this year that she never heard Matt say those four magic words.
“Matt, to this day, has never actually proposed to me, I don’t even know 100 per cent if we’re engaged,” she joked on her podcast, Life Uncut, which she co-hosts with Brittany Hockley.
“Matt has never asked me to marry him, he never said ‘Will you marry me?’”
Marlie Mae was born in June of 2019.
“Still letting the last 24hrs sink in... they’ve been the most rewarding, loving and emotional I’ve ever experienced,” Matt wrote on Instagram.
“Becoming a Dad was better than I ever could have imagined. ❤️”
Sadly, Laura suffered a second miscarriage in between the birth of Marlie Mae and their second daughter, Lola.
“Just two months ago, Matt and I went through our second miscarriage and that still feels raw and very bizarre to even say out loud,” she said on her podcast, Life Uncut, which she co-hosts with Brittany Hockley.
“It’s not something I’ve really spoken about, not something that I’ve talked to many people about, but I feel very, very passionately that miscarriage is a conversation that needs to be had in an open forum.”
Despite their family heartache, they would go on to be blessed with their second daughter, Lola, in February 2021.
The couple were convinced they’d have a boy, so were very surprised when Lola arrived.
“I said I would eat my own poop if you were a girl, and yet HERE YOU ARE! Already teaching me the worldly life lessons that come with being a mama,” Laura wrote on Instagram in Lola’s birth announcement.
“Lola Ellis Johnson, you had us all fooled!” Matt wrote in his own announcement.
“Nana, the neighbour and even the postman thought you were going to be a boy. Playing pranks on us all already… I love it!” he said.
“I also love that I’m now well and truly outnumbered by 3 beautiful and rambunctious girls at home. Welcome to the family. ❤️”
Matt and Laura are currently stuck in the Sydney lockdown, with the two girls and their dog, Buster. However, they seem like absolute champs at keeping both their daughters and their fans entertained.
And while life in lockdown is never easy, it sure does seem to be making the time fly by! Matty recently shared a hilarious update with his fans about his youngest daughter and how quickly she is growing.
"8 months old and you're about to outgrow your sister!" he wrote on his Instagram stories, sharing a snap of his two girls side by side with a hulking emoji.
It's just one of the many light-hearted ways this sweet couple keep us posted on their family of four.
Their wedding, which was planned for the end of this year, will now likely be postponed due to COVID restrictions.
“Even if it does get delayed, I know there’s so many other people out there who’ve done the same thing and then they’ve still had a wonderful wedding at the end of it anyway,” Laura said on Life Uncut.
We can’t wait to see what’s next for these two!
WATCH BELOW: Matty J makes daughter Marlie laugh
