Courtney Stodden revealed they are engaged to partner Chris Sheng by showing off an engagement ring on their Instagram page Sunday. Stodden, 26, and Sheng, a 41-year-old entrepreneur, have been dating for three years. Sheng shared more photos of the ring on his own Instagram page, calling Stodden the “love of my life.” This will be the second marriage for Stodden, who became famous when they married actor Doug Hutchison and they were 16 and he was 50. The two split in 2017, but their divorce was not finalized until March 2020.
“I said yes …OH and the ring made me gag it’s so beautiful,” Stodden wrote, alongside a video clip of themselves showing off the ring. Sheng published a longer tribute to Stodden, revealing that his proposal did not go as planned, but “the moment was right.” Sheng went on, “For the first time we’re both experiencing unconditional love. The truest kind of love. The kind where we may not always like each other but will ALWAYS love and respect each other. I promise to always be your rock, support, and shoulder to lean on – no matter what. I got you. Ily.”
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Later, Stodden spoke with E! News to share more details about the engagement. “Chris got down on one knee while I was crying my eyes out!” Stodden explained. “We returned home from a night out in Palm Springs and in between the rosè and pent-up feelings, I needed a good cry!” They added that the two got emotional because “everything within the last few weeks has dredged up a lot of past trauma.” Sudden later added that it was a “sweet moment” and Sheng reminded them they are not alone. “I’m never going anywhere,” he told them. “I’ll always be here for you.”
Stodden “never pictured myself getting married again,” they told E! News, but they felt the moment was right now because Sheng “truly loves me.” They praised Sheng for staying “by my side through some of the hardest times in my life.” As for the ring, Stodden said it reminded them of the one worn by Carey Mulligan’s Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. “I was so excited and overwhelmed, I took the ring out of the box myself and ran around the corner with it, like a child,” they said.
The happy engagement news comes after an eventful few weeks for Stodden. In mid-April, Stodden came out as non-binary and said their preferred pronouns are they, them, and theirs. After this, Stodden spoke with The Daily Beast about the challenges they faced in their life, including the disturbing messages they received from model Chrissy Teigen on Twitter between 2011 and 2012. In some of the tweets, Teigen even told them to kill themselves.
On May 12, Teigen apologized. “Not a lot of people are lucky enough to be held accountable for all their past bulls— in front of the entire world,” Teigen wrote in part. “I’m mortified and sad at who I used to be. I was an insecure, attention-seeking troll.” Later, Tegein wrote that her own feelings were “nothing compared to how I made Courtney feel.” Teigen also claimed she tried to privately connect with Stodden but was unable to, so she made a public statement instead.
Although Stodden did accept Teigen’s apology, they said they never heard from Teigen or her team. “In fact, she blocked me on Twitter,” Stodden wrote. “All of me wants to believe this is a sincere apology, but it feels like a public attempt to save her partnerships with Target and other brands who are realizing her ‘wokeness’ is a broken record.”
