‘Dancing With the Stars’ Alum Announces Engagement to Lifetime Movie Co-Star

Joey Lawrence found love on Lifetime! The actor announced he and girlfriend Samantha Cope were engaged Tuesday in an interview with Page Six, sharing it’s been an “amazing journey” falling in love with her after meeting on the set of his brother Andrew Lawrence’s Lifetime thriller A Deadly Deed last year.

It’s unclear when the pair got engaged, but the Dancing With the Stars alum opened up about his unexpected romance with his fiancée in the interview. “When you least expect it, obviously, is like when it usually works right in between all the plans that we make,” Lawrence said of Cope. “And I just met the most amazing person ever. Like your best friend and that person you really do share pretty much everything in common with.”

Lawrence’s engagement comes just over a year after he filed for divorce from Chandie Lawrence after 15 years of marriage. The exes shares two daughters, 15-year-old Charleston and 11-year-old Liberty. “I know when you grow up, you always hear about opposites attract,” the SWIM actor told Page Six. “But as we get older we realize you really do have to grow old with your best pal because there are so many areas in life where, you know, it will tear you apart if you’re not.”

The Blossom alum and his ex-wife met back in 1993 when he was just 16 years old and on vacation at Disney World. He recalled to PEOPLE inviting her to get ice cream at the Mouse House, joking at the time they would get married at the theme park. While the teens would go their separate ways, with Lawrence later marrying Michelle Vella in 2002, they would reunite after his divorce from Vella in 2005. In July of that same year, Lawrence wed Chandie in a ceremony held at Disney World.

Back in 2006, the Celebrity Big Brother alum recounted his first date with his now-estranged wife to PEOPLE, recalling, “Being the cheesy romantic that I was, I said, ‘Hey look, there’s the Disney wedding chapel! Maybe we’ll get married there one day.’ Long story short, we did!”