Millie Bobby Brown didn’t know marriage was on the table for her — until meeting fiancé Jake Bongiovi.
“My dream was to have a baby. I wanted to be the woman that my mom is to me and I wanted to be the woman that my grandmother was to me,” Brown, 19, shared in her Glamour cover story, published on Monday, October 16. “So that was never my, like, intention, to be a wife.”
However, her “bizarre” connection with Bongiovi, 21, changed everything for the Stranger Things star.
“After meeting Jake and seeing, ‘Oh, I don’t have to be this stereotypical wife for him. He doesn’t want me to be that either. He wants me to go and do my thing and live my life, and he will hold my hand in the process of that.’ I was like, ‘Oh, I do want this,’” Brown added.
Brown and Bongiovi met at what she referred to as “a really … interesting time.” They first sparked romance rumors in June 2021 and confirmed their relationship with a PDA-filled photo in November of that year. They announced their engagement in April.
While she’s seen the public criticism about getting engaged at such a young age, Brown doesn’t seem to care.
“We were modeled wonderful, loving relationships,” she explained. “So, it’s something that we both had that mutual drive for.”
It helps that she’s close with her fiancé’s family, who’ve been “wonderfully accepting.” (Bongiovi’s dad is Jon Bon Jovi.)
As for why she loves Bongiovi? “He’s so kind,” Brown gushed over her fiancé. “And his heart is just loving and wonderful and smart.”
Before meeting her future husband, Brown said she was “so upset with myself and the decisions I had made,” referring to a past relationship. Prior to going public with Bongiovi, TikTok star Hunter Ecimovic made explicit claims about Brown in July 2021.
“I got tricked. I got taken advantage of, if anything,” he claimed, in part, at the time. “She used her powers on me, and I got manipulated.”
He has since apologized for the comments. Brown reflected on the experience during an interview with Allure in August 2022, saying it made her feel “very vulnerable.” She added, “I felt so out of control and powerless.”
Meeting Bongiovi — Brown previously revealed that their romantic connection started via Instagram — changed her perception on relationships.
“I think I was so afraid to be a strong woman in a relationship,” Brown explained to Glamour. “When I met Jake, I just felt I could be loud. He embraced that and encouraged that. And I fell in love with myself while being with him.”
At one point in their relationship, Brown asked Bongiovi why he loved her. He “listed all these things that I hated about myself,” she recalled.
“Those are things that I love about myself now,” Brown added. “He was a really big, huge part of me loving myself and becoming a woman. It was like, ‘Wow, I really love this person because he allows me to love myself.’”
