Joey Lawrence Announces Engagement Prior to 'Celebrity Dating Game' Appearance

’90s kids might hear the name Joey Lawrence and think of the child actor who played Joey Donovan on NBC’s Gimme a Break!, or the kid who played Joe alongside real-life brothers Matthew and Andrew Lawrence on Brotherly Love.

But the Disney Channel star is all grown up now. At 45, he’s set to appear on the celebrity revival of the once-popular Dating Game, and reveals he’s looking for a contestant “that just is kind.” “That to me is the ultimate element to a successful relationship, just being kind,” he reveals.

But considering the show was filmed a while back, what’s Joey Lawrence’s dating life nowadays?

Describing the kind of contestant he would be open to dating on The Celebrity Dating Game, Joey explains he wants someone who is “kind, honest,” and “able to laugh.” “It’s so easy to be mean,” he says. "We’re so quickly triggered as people today.” So the ability to not take life too seriously and laugh “at yourself” and “at life” is something he’s looking for in a significant other.

And it sounds like he might have found just that. Page Six reports that Joey Lawrence is officially spoken for, and is — as of August 10, 2021 — engaged to the actress Samantha Cope, with whom he stars in an upcoming Lifetime movie his brother Andrew directed.

“So we met there and out of nowhere, you know, it was a crazy year and a half for everybody, obviously the whole world,” Joey told Today once the announcement had been made public. “Then when you least expect [it], amazing things happen, and meeting her has just been really the greatest thing ever.”

Samantha, 34, and Joey have been dating for the past 11 months, so we can only assume he appeared on The Celebrity Dating Game either before they started going steady or in the very early days of their relationship.

While first dates were somewhat unconventional for Joey and Samantha since they met during COVID, the pandemic did provide a silver lining, he says. “All the pretense is gone and you’re not playing games,” he explained, adding that “there was no way to wine and dine anybody [because] we couldn’t go anywhere.”

“So we were literally saying we’d been together like 11 months and it’s we saw one movie, literally one, and we’ve been out to dinner five times,” he continued. But “hanging out, trapped in that, you know, confined space” allowed him to meet “the greatest person,” he gushed.

Though he’s just starting out a fresh chapter with his new love Samantha, Joey is already a family man. In July 2020, he filed for divorce from ex-wife Chandie Lawrence after 15 years of marriage. Chandie and Joey share two daughters: Charleston, 15, and Liberty, 11.

Joey was previously married to first wife, Michelle Vella, in 2002. His first marriage lasted three years, and Joey and Michelle didn’t have any children together.