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For 17 years, fans of reality television in the United States have learned about the life of people with dwarfism by following the experiences of Matt and Amy Roloff and their children, on their family farm in Oregon, Portland. Nine years into the show, Matt and Amy’s relationship became one of 50% of American marriages that end in divorce, when the couple decided to separate. The divorce was finalized the following year, sending loyal viewers down an investigative path to find out what caused the split. All efforts to uncover the cause of the couple’s separation unearthed one name: Caryn Chandler.
Over the years, Amy has shared a theory that the beginning of Matt’s relationship with Caryn overlaps with the final years of her marriage to Matt, but Matt has remained adamant that nothing inappropriate happened between him and Caryn until he was separated from Amy. Ever since Caryn’s name came up and Amy confirmed her involvement in the disintegration of her marriage to Matt, fans have wondered what happened between the two women; read on!
Amy and Matt
Matt and Amy knew they wanted to marry fellow little people long before they met. The 1986 convention for the Little People in America (LPA) made their dreams come true by bringing them together. Amy, a Central Michigan University alumnus was working as a secretary at the time when she decided to attend her first LPA convention. There she met Matt, a businessperson who was a regular at the convention. Matt had seen Amy at a weight-lifting competition, but Amy didn ‘t know him, while he was enamored with Amy, but had brought a date to the convention. However, the two exchanged numbers and kept in touch. Eventually, Matt invited Amy to visit him in California, where their relationship was born. Within the year, Amy was rocking Matt’s grandmother’s ring on her finger, and the two were planning a wedding after he failed to convince her to elope – Matt and Amy married in Michigan in September 1987, 19 years before fans met them on the premiere episode of “Little People, Big World.”
In their 28 years of marriage, Matt and Amy had a cordial relationship, which fans saw for the first few years of the show. Matt was a considerate husband and great father who doted on Amy and their children, particularly Molly. He and Amy worked together on their farm, and raised their children to be hardworking by involving them in farmwork and assigning specific duties to each of them. For years, the relationship between the Roloff family matriarch and patriarch was so solid that Amy had bever entertained the thought of divorce in her near-thirty years of marriage. Fans, too, were equally shocked at the news, which clearly shows that the strong bond between the coupe was visible from their interactions with each other, respect for each other, and concern for each other’s well-being and comfort. The bond wore off in 2015 when the couple filed for divorce, and was broken legally the following year when the court granted their request and dissolved their marriage.
Amy’s Tell-All
Matt moved on and started dating Caryn Chandler soon after the couple announced their separation. However, Amy remained silent about the cause of her separation from Matt for three years, until she released a tell-all book entitled “A Little Me” in 2019. In the book, Amy alleged that Matt had a relationship that crossed the line of friendship with one of Roloff’s farm managers. She backed the allegations with a claim that she found some of the messages he exchanged with the farm manager, who she would later confirm to be Caryn Chandler. According to Amy, the messages were inappropriate for an employer and his employee, or two people who claimed to be just friends. Matt vehemently defended himself, claiming that he didn’t cheat on Amy with Caryn, but that the two only added a romantic dynamic to their formerly platonic relationship long after the end of his marriage.
In an interview a few years after the divorce, Amy alluded to betrayal when she confessed that although Caryn was an employee at the Roloff farm, she considered her a friend, adding that seeing a woman she considered a friend dating her ex-husband was a little awkward for her. Fans glimpsed the awkwardness between Amy and Caryn when the two co-hosted the annual pumpkin patch festival at the Roloff farm in 2022. Matt shared a picture of him and Caryn, their son Jacob and his wife Isabel, and Amy and Marek sitting on piles of hay, adding a caption declaring the first weekend of the pumpkin season a success but fans noted the distance between the two couples, and inferred that Amy and Caryn no longer shared the friendship she had described before the divorce.
Little People, Big World's Matt and Amy Roloff officially file for divorce: http://t.co/LjpYYsA03P pic.twitter.com/PSLLbd15zT
— E! News (@enews) June 8, 2015
A Second Chance for Amy
After her separation from Matt, Amy moved out of the house she had lived in for close to 30 years, opting to leave Roloff farm altogether despite the farm being large enough for her to build a house and live separately. She found a house nearby, and when asked why she left the home she owned with Matt, Amy said that she hoped the farm would be passed down to their children. When the children and Matt sat down to discuss the future of the farm, Caryn intervened, angering Zach, Amy, and their fans. The ensuing exchange of words in-person, on social media, and in confessionals for the show, piled more awkwardness and bad blood on an already strained relationship between Amy and Caryn. After the incident, Amy struggled to work with Caryn, who reiterated the sentiments and confessed that getting along with Amy was challenging. However, both women kept their personal feelings aside to work on the farm, albeit under different motivations since Amy worked to protect her children’s inheritance, while Caryn worked to ensure that the land on which she would live with Matt continues to thrive.
As Amy navigated her strained relationship with her ex-husband and his girlfriend, her personal life was taking off in a direction that she hadn’t anticipated. Amy, who had envisioned marrying and spending her life with a fellow little person since she was a teenager, started dating a man of average height. In Chris Marek, a real estate agent, Amy found the happiness that had eluded her in the last years of her marriage. When he went down on one knee and asked her to marry him, Amy said “Yes.” The couple had their wedding on a beautiful Saturday at Roloff Farms, but despite holding the ceremony at their residence, Caryn and Matt weren’t invited. “Little People, Big World” fans welcomed Amy’s move to exclude Caryn from the ceremony and threatened to boycott the show if Amy ever decided to stop being a cast member. The fans called Amy a saint for being civil to Matt and Caryn, while throwing accusations against Chandler for berating and speaking down at Amy.
Today, two years after their wedding, Amy and Marek couldn’t be happier. The two invite fans to share their happiness through Instagram pictures of their travels, snippets of their date nights, and pictures of them visiting their respective families.
Matt and Caryn
Fans’ blatant displeasure over their relationship hasn’t stopped Matt and Caryn from moving forward in their relationship, which Matt announced in 2017 by sharing a picture of himself and Caryn at his son, Zack, and his wife Tori’s baby shower. As soon as he made the announcement, Amy’s fans came out attacking him for cheating on Amy, and blaming Caryn for the deterioration of the relationship between Matt and Amy. The rocky start to the relationship was an indication of more difficult moments ahead for the couple.
A few years into the relationship, Caryn started to pile the pressure on Matt to propose. Matt addressed the issue in a confessional, saying that Caryn was disappointed that their relationship had stagnated, and Matt was showing no intentions of asking her to marry him. Matt explained that he wanted to live in a new house with Caryn, and would propose to her once their new home was completed. His statement riled fans, who had watched Caryn disapprove of Amy’s taste blatantly under the full glare of the cameras. The incident had occurred a few years earlier when Matt was taking Caryn on a tour of his and Amy’s former house. During the tour, Caryn turned her nose up at several details in the house, calling the textured walls dated, and disapproving of the bedrooms. Her comments alienated the show’s fans and worsened the awkwardness that is visible in her interactions with Amy. Caryn finally got her ring in April. She and Matt are looking at a long engagement ahead of their wedding next year. Time will tell whether they will return the favor, and exclude Amy and Chris from their big day.
