Watch: Kate Gosselin Addresses Speculation She Married Former Bodyguard Steve Neild
Kate Gosselin and Jon Gosselin divorced in 2009.
So, for the most part, Kate’s life now looks much as it did before her ex-husband remarried, Jon tying the knot with Stephanie Lebo in November after four years together.
But while former bodyguard Steve Neild remains her rock—if not the presenter of a rock, Kate quashing marriage speculation in January by clarifying she was wearing her “regular jewelry”—the 51-year-old has been busy on a healing journey, physically and emotionally.
Illustrating the milestone with a TikTok showing her heading into a medical appointment on crutches, Kate shared in December that she was walking again after enduring a “life-altering” leg injury she suffered in September during an unexpectedly hard-hitting round of fetch with her dogs.
“It’s walking day!” she exclaimed. “It finally came. I’m so excited I can’t even stand it.”
In the meantime, she added, “I have to start at 25 percent, and then 50 percent, 75 percent, 100 percent. So you won’t see me really walking immediately, but I’m excited.”
And by the time she and Steve were in his native New Zealand in January, she was hobbling around on a Waiheke Island beach on her own two feet, using one crutch.
Kate Gosselin/Instagram
“This is something I couldn’t have done even a few weeks ago,” she wrote atop a Jan. 6 video, adding the caption, “WALK to the water with me.”
A week later, she ditched the crutch and it has made no more appearances on her socials.
So, the mother of twins Mady and Cara, 25, as well as sextuplets Alexis, Hannah, Leah, Aaden, Collin and Joel, 22—all shared with Jon—has mended in that respect.
Days before she first got back on her feet, however, Kate was mourning the sudden death of her dog Nanuq, who, according to the Jon & Kate Plus 8 alum, passed away on Dec. 19 during a car trip to North Carolina to spend Christmas with her kids.
“The dogs are excited to see the kids, and the kids are excited to see us and the dogs,” she said in a TikTok before hitting the road. “It’s really exciting. I haven’t seen my kids in a long time because we’ve been far, far away and they’ve been in college or working.”
In an Instagram post paying tribute to the pup she also called NuNu, Kate wrote, “One minute she was here and healthy. The next, she was gone. Her last gift to me was when she got into the truck to leave, she poked her head forward to where I was sitting in the passenger seat and licked my left cheek, twice.”
Kate’s fur baby brood now consists of German shepherd Meika and malamute puppy Koda—she and Steve finalized her adoption just weeks ago—and the reality TV star raised a few eyebrows with a May 26 TikTok in which she compared having a puppy in the house to raising kids.
Kate Gosselin/Instagram
“I was just crying this morning,” she said in the video, wiping tears from her eyes. “I’m tired. It’s getting to be a lot, which makes me sound like a baby, but the truth is, I’ve just been on watch constantly hoping nothing, you know, happens and watching them all the time.”
Unlike when her children were little, Kate noted, “I am 51 now. I’m not 29, 30. So it’s just gotten to be a lot.”
“Koda is a humongous personality,” she continued. “She is now very obsessed with her ball equally as Meika, and she could run forever.”
Kate Gosselin/TikTok
Steve was at work, Kate shared, and while she’s alone with the pups “I always turn on Bob Ross painting,” which apparently calms everybody down, “and I take them on walks.”
They planned to start training Koda soon, she added, but the “strain and stress” were real.
“I know that we’re doing a good thing,” Kate said. “We just have to hang in.”
Which, as a mother of eight, she’s used to doing.
Kate Gosselin/TikTok
Kate shared rare footage of her human brood after celebrating Mother’s Day and the sextuplets’ 22nd birthday, revealing in a May 11 TikTok that there was “a scary twist” in the form of Leah getting into a car accident while behind the wheel.
“Fortunately, Leah and I are uninjured,” Kate wrote. “Her car did not fair so well…It’s totaled…But as they say, the show must go on. We had a BIRTHDAY to celebrate! And lots of catching up to do!”
Cut to a restaurant where she was sitting with Alexis, Leah, Aaden and Joel—Collin and Hannah have remained closer to their dad in recent years—and then holding up a book called Just a Few Things I Love About You Mom, which she called the “BEST gift my kids have ever given me.”
See more photos of Kate and Jon’s kids through the years:
Kate Gosselin/Instagram
Instagram / Kate Gosselin
Instagram / Stephanie Lebo
Instagram / Kate Gosselin
Instagram / Hannah Gosselin
Instagram / Hannah Gosselin
Instagram / Collin Gosselin
Raymond Hall/GC Images
Instagram / Jon Gosselin
Donna Svennevik/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
Doug Meszler/Splash News
Heidi Gutman/NBC NewsWire
