“We both want our fans to connect with us on a deeper level,” Cole, 22, says in a joint interview with PEOPLE about their book,Cole and Sav: Our Surprising Love Story,out October 9. The book will explore their individual stories growing up, Savannah’s pregnancy at 19, and how they met and fell in love. (See the exclusive excerpt and cover reveal below.)
“We definitely want people to take away that there is hope at the end of that tunnel,” Cole says.
Cole and Savannah first met when he was 19 and she was a 23-year-old single mom to then-3-year-old daughter Everleigh.
“I don’t think that anyone would ever pair us together,” Cole says, explaining that not only was he younger than Savannah, who was a single mom, but that they also lived in different states (Savannah is from California and Cole is from Alabama). “I think it just comes to show you can never doubt who God has for you. [You should] always be open to his possibilities.”
Courtesy of Thomas Nelson
Individually, Cole and Savannah had large social media followings, which grew even more after they joined their brands. But it’s their love story that keeps drawing people in.
The LaBrants got married a year ago and love showing their fans how they navigate the fun, messy parts of life. (The video from their wedding alone has almost 30 million views.) But the main star of the show is Everleigh.
“The main thing we’re trying to show our fans is a wholesome, not-perfect family that has a lot of fun together,” Cole says. “God has given us this awesome platform that we use to glorify Him. [We’re having] a lot of fun doing it.”
Steven Meiers
In the book, and the below excerpt, Savannah describes the affect her parents’ divorce had on her (the marriage ended after her father cheated on her mother, she says). She was scarred again when Everleigh’s father cheated on her — multiple times.
“[My parents’ divorce] definitely got to me. Especially as a teenage girl I think it’s so important to have your dad in your life if you can,” Savannah says. “I think that definitely made me kind of go down a darker path.”
Despite their heartbreak, Savannah and her mom rallied together to raise Everleigh.
“We were both there for each other and understood each other’s situations,” she says.
Savannah explains that meeting Cole not only changed her life, but also the life of her daughter. Now a stepdad, Cole has been careful about how he navigates his relationship with Everleigh.
“The fact that I wasn’t [Everleigh’s] real dad would get in my head a lot,” he says, but adds that their relationship has grown after he married Savannah. “Obviously, I never want to take the spot of her real dad. She definitely knows she has two dads who love her so much.”
“I really had to put aside my pride and… just know my goal is to love her,” Cole adds, “and for her to see how a dad is supposed to treat her mom, how a dad is supposed to treat her… and let her figure out the rest.”
Both Cole and Savannah are excited about the book’s release because they want to share the lessons they’ve learned as a family, and how their lives have changed since falling in love.
“I had put in my head that nobody would accept me since I had a kid,” Savannah explains. “I never thought I would find somebody who would not only choose and love me but choose and love my daughter even more.”
Continue reading for an excerpt fromCole and Sav: Our Surprising Love Story:
I was pregnant.
It didn’t last. Two weeks later my dad went back to the woman for whom he left my mom. I didn’t speak to him for months…not until after Everleigh was born. My disappointments were just beginning. Around my sixth month of pregnancy, I learned Tommy, who had been eager to get married when he found out I was pregnant, was now cheating on me. I was done, I thought. I dumped him, but we got back together when Everleigh was born. He promised me he’d changed, and I let myself believe him because I felt like I had to do everything I could to try to make a relationship with Tommy work for our daughter’s sake. He hadn’t changed. Within a matter of weeks after Everleigh was born, Tommy left me. Again. I felt horrible about myself. It wasn’t the last time. Tommy came back around whenever something big with Everleigh happened, like Christmas or a birthday. A lot of times I asked him to come back because I felt like our daughter needed her dad to be there. He came, and both of us were so focused on Everleigh that we didn’t argue, and we had what felt like happy family times. Happy family days triggered the two of us talking about getting back together. He’d swear everything was going to be different this time. “Just give me another chance,” he’d say, and I always caved. We always got along great if Everleigh was with us. However, whenever she was with my mom or asleep, the arguments started, the same old arguments we always had. Words flew. I was left feeling ugly and worse than worthless, like no one else would ever want to be with me because I had a kid. I could not live with that, so Tommy and I would split up, again. After every breakup, when Ev was asleep, I’d break down in tears before God, begging Him to bring me a guy who’d love and respect me and love Everleigh like his own. That guy never showed up. Or maybe I just never gave him a chance.
I once dated a good Christian guy in college during one of the times Tommy and I had broken up. He treated me with respect and was the kind of guy I should have dated, but then Tommy came back around asking for another chance, and I gave it to him. Just like that, I broke up with the good guy to go back to the bad boy. Yes, Tommy had cheated on me, but strangely enough, that was part of the appeal. When Tommy stared at other girls, even when we were together, that gave me a challenge to make him have eyes only for me. If he’d been all about me, then there was no chase. Writing it now, this sounds sick to me, and it was. I describe it as having a disease that I had accepted as my lot in life. Tommy didn’t just cheat on me. He drank a lot, but then again, I drank and partied when we first started dating.
My family begged me to give up on Tommy, which only made me mad at them and more determined to change him. “You deserve better than this, Sav,” my mom and sister told me over and over. I told them that they didn’t understand. But they did. I was the one who didn’t want to admit the truth to myself. Living this way changed me. I wasn’t a happy person. I acted happy in the videos Everleigh and I made on musical.ly, but overall there wasn’t a lot of joy in my life. My family saw how miserable I was. My mom told me she was always praying for me to leave him and had her friends praying as well. I know she was also asking God to send a decent, godly guy into my life. I never imagined Cole might be the answer to that prayer when I sent my sister off to find him.
source: people.com
