Chris Harrison took his time to introduce his now-wife, Lauren Zima, to his children.
“We waited a minute,” Harrison, 55, said on the Wednesday, November 4, episode of the “Unplanned” podcast. “I had a great conversation with my kids, you know, I asked them. I’m like, ‘Do you guys want to meet somebody who Dad’s dating?’”
The former host of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette continued, “I let my kids tell me. They said, ‘We don’t want to meet everybody, but if someone becomes important to you, then they should be important to us. We don’t want to wake up and Dad says we’re getting married today and we haven’t even met this person.’”
Chris shares son Joshua, 25, and daughter Taylor, 18, with ex-wife Gwen Harrison. The TV personality and Gwen were married from 1993 to 2012. Years after their divorce, Chris moved on with Zima, 38, in 2018.
“When LZ became so important in my life [and] as soon as I felt like I was hiding it from people, you know what I mean?” Chris noted of the right moment to introduce Joshua and Taylor to the former TV journalist, with whom he cocreated an upcoming faith-and-family-focused dating reality called The Vow. “I was like, ‘OK, this feels like I’m hiding something and I don’t want to hide the fact that I love this person or I’m falling in love with this person.’ Then, it felt like the time and then it was introducing her to the kids and [she] started going to lacrosse games and recitals and all the stuff and being around at dinners.”
Chris’ kids were in high school when he set a time for them to meet with Zima face to face.
“[When] we started dating and I will say it was kind of advanced because I was at the point in my life where I found this woman I was falling madly in love with,” he recalled. “I almost went When Harry Met Sally. It’s, like, ‘When you meet that girl I don’t want another day to go by. Why am I wasting time?’”
Chris added, “I just felt different about this woman and she, kind of, just knocked me off my feet and I was like, ‘Whoa.’”
Chris and Zima got married in 2023, soon blending their family.
“I will pat Lauren and I on the shoulder a little bit,” he quipped on Wednesday’s episode. “I think we have a great line of communication. … I always tell parents, ‘If I can give you any advice as a parent, love them and be present. If you do those two things everything else will find its place.’”
