How Karamo Brown Learned He Had 9-Year-Old Son After Losing Virginity

Because Stephanie moved away during a time where cell phones and the internet didn’t exist, and Karamo never got her address or phone number, he said he had no way of keeping in contact.

“So I went about my little gay married life,” explained the reality star, who was in a relationship with director Ian Jordan for 10 years before calling off their engagement in 2020, “and never saw her again.”

But everything changed when Karamo was 25. “I got a stack of papers for back child support for a 9-year-old I didn’t know existed,” he recalled. “Apparently, she had been pregnant from that one moment, and then had the child.”

The Real World alum eventually headed back to Texas, where his mom had been living, so he could sort everything out. Not long after, Karamo showed up at Stephanie’s doorstep and learned the truth of the situation.

“When she opened the door, she started crying,” he said, “and she was like, ‘I never told you, because I wanted one of us to have a good life.’”

“In that moment, we were both 15-year-olds again,” he continued. “We hugged, we embraced. That night, I met my son for the first time. And when I tell you, when I met my son, it was like something that was inside of me that was missing, all of a sudden healed up.”

In fact, Karamo loved being a dad so much that he asked for full custody of Jason, now 29, six months later. 

“This is what I respect about her as a mother and as a woman. She understood that my son needed his father,” Karamo explained, “and that because of a choice she had made, I missed years.”

“But I said, ‘You did it all, now let me take the stress off of you,’” he added. “And I got full custody of my son and raised him.”

And though the culture expert—who adopted Jason’s half-brother, Christian, 26, a year later—was bummed to have missed out on so many years with his son, he ultimately had nothing but gratitude for Stephanie’s decision.

“I didn’t fault her for making a choice because I was able to go to school, do things, to provide for us,” he said. “Now, we’ve all got a great life because of her choice. If we would have both been teen parents, I don’t know where we would have been.”

These days, Karamo has nothing but pride for his family and even hopes their story inspires others to achieve their goals, no matter what life throws their way. 

“When people hear my story, my hope is always that they start to believe that the life they want is possible for them because I am living the life I’ve always dreamed,” he told Parents in 2018. “In our country, being from immigrant parents, growing up black in the South, coming out at 16-years-old, being a teen parent… you would assume that my life would amount to nothing. And here I stand today. So, if I can do it… you can too!”

Keep reading for more celebrity parents and their mini-me kids…