A 2012 Valentine's Day fix-up was where Lauren Conrad's story with husband William Tell began. Now back in Laguna Beach with the lawyer and their two sons, she's living life with arms wide open.
In the years since Lauren Conrad saturated TV screens, first as a high schooler on Laguna Beach, then writing a new story on The Hills, she's filled more than a few of the blank pages that lay before her: Launching her eponymous lifestyle empire, marrying attorney and Something Corporate rocker William Tell and raising their sons Liam, 8, and Charlie, 6.
So, she's still living her life with arms wide open nearly 17 years after she headed away from The Hills. She's just no longer interested in releasing her inhibitions on camera.
"I would love to put a pin in my career," the 40-year-old recently shared on former Laguna frenemy Kristin Cavallari's Let's Be Honest podcast of bookending her reality television career with The Reunion: Laguna Beach, streaming on The Roku Channel April 10. "It would be really cool to end my career with the same people I started it with."
And this ending feels very much planned.
As for whether the special is definitely her last round of reality TV, Conrad told Cavallari, "God I hope so."
In 2022, Conrad decided to go back, back to the beginning, leaving her L.A. life for her oceanside hometown.
Noting she doesn't really yearn for her nights at Les Deux or crying mascara tears for the cameras, she told Cavallari, "I feel so lucky because you know, it can go a lot of ways when you've been in entertainment for a long time. And I think a lot of people really miss it. And I didn't."
Instead, she's awoken new dreams.
After two seasons on Laguna and another five navigating The Hills, the California native spun her MTV notoriety into a full-on brand, launching her LC Lauren Conrad line with Kohl's, the more upscale Paper Crown, her eponymous lifestyle website and fair-trade shop The Little Market in quick succession. "I spent my 30s and a lot of my 20s working so hard just being like, 'I want to do more. I want to take on more,'" she recently explained to People. "And now I think I've reached a place where I'm just so content."
Focused solely on her namesake Kohl's line and children's brand Little Co. now, she's able to squeeze some key meetings onto her calendar: Watching soccer games and baseball practices on the same fields she once played at.
"I have a really good work-life balance and I'm just trying to enjoy this moment," she told the outlet. "My kids are still pretty young, and I want to spend all the time I can with them, and I'm just trying to be present right now."
And the life she's built with Tell—a Valentine's Day set-up that turned into forever—feels pretty perfect.
If Conrad is fully coming clean, their 2012 fix-up wasn't their first encounter, the reality star revealing that she'd actually attended one of the 46-year-old's concerts when she was 16.
"I realized we had met because I Googled him," she recently revealed to People, noting her initial reaction was that he was super cute. Or, as she put it to the outlet, "My husband's a smoke show!"
An emotionally intelligent one at that.
"I remember really early when we started dating, I was joking, and I called him a name," she reflected, "and he said to me, 'So, I don't name-call. I'm never going to call you a name. Let's not do that.' I was like, 'Oh, okay. We're adults.'"
As for her fame-making gig, "I don't think he watched much of it," Conrad told E! News' Erin Lim Rhodes at the March 26 premiere of The Reunion: Laguna Beach March 26. "He caught a few episodes, but he's very like, 'I don't need to see it. I know you now.'"
Though they were just beginning, pens in their hands, "We both dove in almost immediately," Conrad told People. "We fell hard and got engaged a year and a half after we started dating, which is pretty quick."
Married in dreamy coastal vows befitting her standing as a millennial tastemaker, "I wanted to have a family with him," she detailed on a 2022 episode of the Perelel Lives podcast. Though she'd previously waffled on having kids, "Maybe that's what I was unsure of before. I just hadn't found a partner who I was really excited to start a family with, so I think that was it for me."
She was confident the USC law school grad would be a good father and thrilled when he proved her right, the pair welcoming Liam in July 2017 and his little brother Charlie two years later.
"He's so engaged with our kids," she told People of her fellow Southern California native. "He’s the parent who does funny voices when he reads the story. He coaches every team they’re on. It’s been really fun to parent together." Lightyears removed from her love triangle days on Laguna Beach, Conrad noted the key to her successful marriage is that they're each "good communicators."
"We had to learn how the other one communicated," she acknowledged to People, "and it took some time. But I think because of that, it's a fun, easy relationship. There's always going to be hard stuff, but if you can figure it out together and be like, 'Alright, let's sit down and talk this out calmly,' then it's nice. I've done it the other way, and it's not fun."
Conrad and the former Something Corporate guitarist were set up by mutual pals on Valentine's Day in 2012.
By October of that year, the pair began showing up together to events more frequently—like the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic—and even started to match!
"Just looked at the calendar and realized it was a year and half ago today that I met this guy... And I sure am glad I did," the former Laguna Beach star captioned an August 2013 Instagram pic.
First Comes Marriage, Then Comes Honeymoon
Eleven months after the attorney popped the question, Conrad became Mrs. William Tell in an intimate wedding California ceremony held September 13, 2014. Then, it was time to celebrate.
"We ate our way through our honeymoon. It was fun!" the former Hills star told E! News of the couple's Italian honeymoon after tying the knot. "We did a tour of pizza, it was like pizza every night."
The newlyweds stayed cool at the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic at L.A.'s Will Rogers State Historic Park on Oct. 11, 2014.
Conrad shared this adorable photo of her main man and their two fur babies to social media in August 2015.
Tell was right by his wife's side in the spring of 2016 as she promoted the launch of her lifestyle book, Celebrate.
"Celebrating 4 wonderful years with my Valentine," the blond beauty captioned this tropical photo opp from 2016.
The celeb announced she and Tell were expecting their first child together at the start of 2017. The pair jetted off to a tropical location to celebrate their babymoon in style. Son Liam Tell was born July 5, 2017, and weighed in at 6 lbs., 14 oz.
After welcoming Liam in 2017, the couple added his little brother Charlie into the mix in 2019. Ever since, they've been one happy family. After all, Lauren has noted before that Will made her realize she wanted kids.
As she noted on the Perelel Lives podcast in 2022, "I wanted to have a family with him and I wanted to have kids with him.”
Lauren exhibited real life with a hilarious selfie of the couple giving their kids a bath.
"Happy Valentine’s Day!!" Lauren wrote in the 2021 post. "This is honestly the only photo we took together this entire year. William hates photos, but I love him."
In 2023, Lauren supported William Tell's band Something Corporate backstage.
Among the pics that Conrad used to reflect on their year in 2023: This beachside buss.