“Little People, Big World” Star Jacob Roloff Reveals Where He Stands with His Family 10 Years After Leaving Reality TV (Exclusive)

The former reality TV star and his wife, Isabel, open up to PEOPLE about their private life a decade after his contentious departure

NEED TO KNOW

• A decade ago, Jacob Roloff announced his exit from Little People, Big World, the TLC reality series that made him a household name at age 9
• The former reality TV star and his wife, Isabel, sat down with PEOPLE for a wide-ranging interview about their private life a decade after his contentious departure
• “I certainly don’t regret it,” says Jacob. “But I’m still working out what it all means and what I can do to move forward”

A decade ago, when Jacob Roloff announced his exit from Little People, Big World, he did so defiantly. 

In an Instagram post — shared on July 6, 2016 — Roloff acknowledged the influx of messages he had received from fans asking him to return to the hit TLC reality series, on which he starred for 10 years alongside the rest of his nuclear family.

“I’m posting this to say that that will never happen,” he penned in his lengthy caption. “The family that is filmed is not my family. They are the Roloff characters and I have scarcely anything in common with them, nor do I want to be a character myself.”

And just like that, Roloff’s era as a reality TV personality — which began when he was only 9 years old — had come to a close.

“I certainly don’t regret it,” Roloff, now 29, tells PEOPLE in an interview about his time on the series. “But I’m still working out what it all means and what I can do to move forward.”

When LPBW first premiered in 2006, it quickly made the Roloff family household names. The show followed Jacob’s parents, Matt and Amy, both of whom have dwarfism, and their family of six on Roloff Farms in Oregon. Behind the scenes, things were darker than they seemed.

In 2020, Jacob alleged that he had been molested by Chris Cardamone, a former producer on the show, between 2007 and 2010. (Cardamone did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment at the time, while TLC told PEOPLE in a statement, “TLC was just informed about an alleged encounter that occurred years ago involving a third party connected to the production of Little People, Big World. We are saddened and troubled by this very serious allegation, and TLC will work cooperatively with the authorities.” )

And two years later, Jacob wrote in a post on X that he was “paid roughly $6/hr to be filmed for my whole childhood,” adding, “I wish I kept filming but I value my principles and my soul. Life is complicated.”

So when he finally made his exit from LPBW at the age of 18, Jacob tells PEOPLE he felt like he needed to “disappear.” In those early years after his departure, he went to Humboldt County, Calif., where he got a regular job trimming weeds.

“Those people were not watching reality TV, so they were like, ‘Hey, what’s your name?’ ” he remembers. “I was like, ‘That’s beautiful. I’ll stay here.’ ”  

Outside of the reality TV spotlight, Jacob married his longtime girlfriend, Isabel, in 2019, and the pair welcomed their son Matteo in 2021. Slowly, the pair began to share more of their life online with their nearly 500,000 Instagram followers. And they eventually moved back to Roloff Farms, where they now manage 70 acres of land, grow pumpkins and raise their 60 animals. 

“We’re living on the farm now, a double-wide that my dad used to live in,” Jacob says. “Me and my cousin Max, my dad’s nephew, we manage the place,” he adds, noting that they still do pumpkin season at the farm, which will return later this October.

“And I take care of the animals,” Isabel adds. “And then I grow flowers. Our one son, Mateo, is growing up a lot like Jacob did, just a farm kid.”

Jacob adds that one of the joys of parenting has been watching his son participate in the same farm activities he did as a child.

“Seeing him pick the fruit from some of the same trees that I picked fruit from on the farm here, that has been incredible,” he says of watching his son. “I have very few memories of life before the show, so I’m seeing him at the exact stage. There’s something beautiful about that.”

“He’s got a big personality and he speaks his mind and we’re raising him that way,” Isabel adds. “It’s a good reminder that you’re raising an individual and not an extension of you. A lot of parents have so many expectations of who they want their kids to be. He’s a little bit like him, a little bit like me, but he’s also very individual. He’s very himself.”

Despite his complicated relationship with LPBW, Jacob tells PEOPLE that he’s managed to maintain fairly “normal” relationships with his family members. He says he’s closest to his brother Jeremy, mostly because he lives nearby, and their kids often play together. Jacob’s mom babysits Matteo “every once in a while,” he says. And his cousin Max also lives with them on the farm.

“Everybody understands that, for the cousins’ and the kids’ sake, let’s all just put our differences aside and maintain those relationships,” adds Isabel. “His family is just in a good place, I’d say, from where it’s been in the past.”

And though they share their life online, they have one very strict rule: They will not post their son’s face.

“Even if I weren’t on reality TV, I think it would’ve come to the same conclusion that there’s a lot of risk with oversharing your kids,” says Jacob. “People get weird. Even without showing Mateo, they’ll make comments that are like, ‘Oh, he must be ugly or he must be this or he must be that.’ ”

Naturally, adds Isabel, the pair are cognizant of Jacob’s childhood on reality TV and the comments he was constantly subjected to from the show’s audience, even before he could decide for himself whether he wanted to be involved.

“People being able to project their own decisions over what they see on TV — we never wanted to allow that into our child’s life,” she says. “Jacob made it very clear when we got pregnant — it was one of the first things he said — that we’re not posting our son online.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

So why continue to share their lives at all?

The honest answer, says Jacob, is that it felt a bit “impractical” to hide the fact that they were parents from the world.

“I think Jacob understood that, since he has a public profile, people are going to ask all these things,” adds Isabel. “Jacob enjoys sharing about being a father and all the things he does with Mateo on the farm.”

And now, she continues, they get to tell their story on their own terms: “It’s healing to be able to live here on the farm without the cameras around all the time.”

Says Jacob: “It’s certainly a new era.”

Read the full article here