Fans of reality TV know Amy Roloff from TLC's hit series "Little People, Big World," but
there's a lot more to her story than what you might expect.
Here's the truth about Amy Roloff.
Growing up, Amy faced many challenges, and she talked openly about them in her memoir, "A Little Me."
Amy was frequently ill and missed many school days due to hospital stays.
That's hard enough to deal with on its own, but even when she could attend school, she
had to put up with harsh bullying from her peers.
Not only did she endure standard schoolyard teasing, but some of her bullies were particularly
relentless and cruel.
"I know growing up it was, you know, not good."
Amy and her brother, Roger, discussed her experience with bullying during an episode
of "Little People, Big World."
Although Roger admitted to teasing his sister himself when he surpassed her in height, he
was still there to stick up for her when it came to her bullies.
The harassment got so bad that Roger sometimes left school early to walk his sister home safely.
One bully, in particular, used to follow Amy home, and it wasn't until Roger fought the
boy off that he finally left her alone.
Talking to the cameras, Amy said,
"It's affected me for a long, long time, allowing other people's opinions and thoughts [to]
matter more than what I truly thought about myself."
"Things from your childhood can affect you for the rest of your life."
Since "Little People, Big World" took off, Amy has primarily been known for her role
on the show as the family's matriarch.
But you might not know that she used to enjoy working as a preschool teacher.
Although Amy threw herself into raising her children, starring on the TV show, and working
on the family farm, she's admitted how much she misses her time as a teacher.
In one Facebook post from back in 2017, she shared a picture of a note on her Starbucks
drink that said, "To the best preschool teacher."
She explained that the barista who wrote the message was the mother of one of the girls she used to teach.
The note clearly brightened Amy's day, and she said that she missed teaching a lot.
In 2020, Amy reminisced with Instagram followers while cleaning her belongings out of the farmhouse,
and she shared photos of the shelves of books and other teaching supplies she had in storage.
In the caption, she wrote,
"The basement area was tough.
It reminded [me] how much I miss and love teaching."
In her book, "A Little Me," Amy got personal about her struggles with body image, self-esteem,
and even her consideration of plastic surgery.
Just because she's a star doesn't mean she's immune to insecurity.
She admitted that, especially as she got older, the desire to alter her appearance surgically
became more and more tempting.
In one passage, the reality star wrote,
"When my body started to go south, I'll admit, I thought about getting some sort of plastic
surgery to give the old body a little lift."
Along with aging, Amy said having fame as a reality TV star added more pressure to look her best.
She added,
"After doing reality television for fifteen years and seeing so many women having it done.
I guess it's no surprise that it crept into my mind."
However, in the end, Amy chose not to undergo any operations.
She explained that while society can make it feel like you need to look a certain way
to get the most out of life, she's living life to the fullest without having any work done at all.
She explained,
"I'm defying those odds because I believe I already have all that without changing my body."
Amy and her now ex-husband, Matt Roloff, seemed to have a whirlwind romance.
During a video posted on her cooking channel on YouTube, she described the beginning of
their relationship, saying,
"One day, I met someone at the annual Little People of America national conference.
He was from California and I from Michigan.
We were two different types of people and had two different types of dwarfism."
After dating long-distance and only seeing each other in person four times, Matt asked
Amy to marry him.
Their engagement was only three months long.
Her marriage and the family they built together meant a lot to Amy, and divorce was not something
she considered lightly.
However, in a chapter in her book, "A Little Me," Amy claimed she realized Matt had been unfaithful.
She explained,
"Matt and our farm manager, who had been working for us a number of years by then, seemed to
have more than just a working relationship or friendship."
Though she never specifically named the farm manager, it was presumably Matt's current
girlfriend, Caryn Chandler.
Despite their marital problems, divorce was still not Amy's first instinct.
She wrote,
"I kept quiet over the years.
I didn't even think about divorce; I didn't want it to be an option."
Despite the couple's difficult divorce, Matt has said that he and Amy are now on good terms.
In fact, he claims they get along better than fans of the reality show "Little People, Big World" might think.
During an interview with Good Housekeeping, Matt said that while it appears that he and
Amy are always fighting, that's not the case.
Because the show is filmed over several months and then compressed into a few short episodes,
their most dramatic moments are often condensed into a shorter amount of time than they are in reality.
He explained,
"Let's say Amy and I are arguing about something.
We've been getting along for six months, and then we have another argument.
Well, they throw those two arguments into one episode.
Just the nature of television really puts out a different impression."
Their relationship is likely less strained now since Amy has moved into her own home
and has moved on romantically with her fiancé, Chris Marek.
Viewers of "Little People, Big World" will likely remember how difficult of a decision
it was for Amy to sell her half of the family farm.
For a while after the divorce, Amy and Matt both still lived on the property but in separate
houses, and the future of Roloff Farms was very uncertain.
In fact, the drama of what to do with the farm played out so long that some fans got
frustrated with the indecision.
One fan even commented on Amy's Instagram to say that the back and forth about the property
was, quote, "killing the storyline of [their] show."
But this wasn't a choice that anyone could rush Amy into.
She explained that it took time for her to accept the divorce, and selling the farm was
a part of that process.
According to Distractify, she said,
"I think I needed time to say that I had a permanency, I had a place, I had something
that I could hang on to."
However, she did eventually let go.
She sold her portion of the property to Matt in August 2020.
According to numbers reported by The Sun, she made a good profit, selling 32 acres for
a whopping $975,000 - no doubt adding to Amy's already impressive net worth.
"But I hope now she'll be more at peace with the whole decision and comes to terms with
whatever struggles she has with that."
In an excerpt from her book, "A Little Me," Amy explained that her divorce made her feel
like a failure at first.
She wrote,
"It saddens me that my relationship had to end.
It was a living death, and there are moments I feel like I'm still grieving a loss."
But during that time, and presumably during other struggles, Amy turned to her faith,
which, she said, has helped her time and time again.
Amy went on to say,
"Even when I didn't think God was there, he was; I just didn't look to see that he was.
I was too busy trying to fix everything instead of listening and allowing him to.
In the second act I have in front of me are hope, possibilities, and faith.
For that I'm grateful."
Clearly, Amy has clung to her family and her faith to carry her through, whether she's
dealing with bullying, divorce, or other hardships.
Amy valued her marriage to Matt, and going through a divorce was a painful process for her.
However, throughout those hard times, she remained honest and vulnerable with her fans,
even going on Facebook Live to talk directly to them about how she was feeling at various
points in the process.
Amy opened up during one Facebook Live about her feelings towards her ex's current relationship
with Caryn Chandler.
She said,
"I'm not jealous or bitter.
I will absolutely be frank with you guys, I think it was hard and sometimes it's still
hard for me to see them."
"Relationships unfortunately, you know, a lot more than I think should, have check-out
times, and you know they get divorced and stuff."
During another Facebook Live, she responded to a fan directly and assured them she was doing well.
She admitted,
"Life is moving on.
I've got a lot of great things going on.
I've got a good relationship, I've got good friends around me and a good community.
Life may feel a little bit uncertain sometimes, but I put it in God's hands.
My faith puts it in His hands and I just hope I do the best I can to follow Him."
Since the divorce, Amy has moved forward and is happily engaged to Chris Marek.
Soon after they met, Marek took Amy on a motorcycle ride for their first date.
Amy was thrilled with Marek and with the date.
Talking about the outing, she told the "Little People, Big World" cameras,
"I could have been on this bike ride for hours.
It was just so, so much fun."
Despite meeting and coming together later in life, the couple has had an adventurous
relationship from the start.
Years into their relationship, they're still just as adventurous, and Amy has indeed spent
hours on cross-country motorcycle road trips with her fiancé.
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