Teen Mom was unavoidable in its heyday, and it quickly shaped a distinct era of pop culture. Even if someone didn’t watch it, they’d at least seen one clip of a fight or screaming match between a teen and their parent. What casual fans — or critics — might not know is that the series has continued airing over the years, and, in fact, just wrapped the second half of its eighth season. To mark the occasion, we wanted to check in on the moms who got it all started, the original cast of Teen Mom.
Maci Bookout-McKinney
After originally appearing in 16 and Pregnant back in 2009, Bookout became one of the key members of Teen Mom. She appeared in all four original seasons, as well as staying aboard for Teen Mom OG in 2015. Bookout had her first child, Bentley, with then-boyfriend Ryan Edwards. She eventually moved on with motocross professional Taylor McKinney in 2012, and she’s since had another son and a daughter. The two married in 2017.
Since her time on the show, Bookout has branched out in her career. She appeared on Naked and Afraid, although she lasted less than two days on the program. She’s also established herself as an author, penning two books: Bulletproof in 2016 and I Wasn’t Born Bulletproof: Lessons I’ve Learned (So You Don’t Have To) the following year. She and her husband run the popular clothing brand Things That Matter, and she continues to appear on the show as of this season.
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Farrah Abraham
Perhaps the most infamous of the Teen Mom cast, Abraham had an incredibly tough time on the show. On top of dealing with an abusive family and personal struggles, she was trying to raise daughter Sophia. Although she was a part of the cast for nearly a decade, Abraham ultimately was let go from the franchise in 2017 for appearing in a series of pornographic films, starring in her first in 2013. Since then, Farrah Abraham has been been working at Penthouse as a feminist book reviewer.
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Catelynn Lowell-Baltierra
Lowell was a notable member of the Teen Mom cast for deciding to place her daughter up for adoption and appearing in every season of the franchise. She had a second daughter in 2015, as well as a third in 2019. She married her longtime boyfriend and father of all three of her daughters in eight months after the birth of her second daughter in 2015. Both Lowell and her husband briefly hosted a short-lived MTV show about reuniting people who were adopted with their birth parents in 2016, but the show was ultimately cancelled. She continues to star in the series alongside most of the cast.
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Amber Portwood
Arguably the worst case of life after Teen Mom is Portwood. Her time both on and after the show is marked by multiple domestic violence charges, including serving a year of a five-year sentence for drug possession and abandoning a rehab program in 2012. She also stirred up controversy when she claimed she wouldn’t return to the show for its seventh season, but ultimately joined the show once again. She had another child in 2018 and was arrested yet again in 2019 for domestic battery and criminal recklessness. According to her April episode of Teen Mom OG, she accepted a plea deal for those charges. She made a post on Instagram last week bidding her followers goodbye for a “long time” and saying she was feeling healthy.
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Cheyenne Floyd
Floyd was one of the two replacements for Farrah Abraham after she was fired from the show. She joined the cast in 2018 and had her child in her early 20s with then-boyfriend Cory Wharton, so while she’s not technically a teen mom, she’s been a key part of the show the past few years. Most recently, she was a small part of the latest Teen Mom scandal, as Wharton’s new girlfriend and mother of his second child was fired from the show for racially insensitive tweets.
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Bristol Palin
Palin was only a brief member of Teen Mom OG, joining alongside Cheyenne Floyd to replace Farrah Abraham. Unlike Floyd, Palin had her first child as a 17 year old. Her time on the show was low-key compared to some of the heights of the earlier seasons, and she ultimately left after a roughly a year to focus on her work as a real estate agent.
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Mackenzie McKee
She joined the show in the first of the eighth season as a guest, but she was promoted to the main cast for its more recent second half. McKee joined the cast of Teen Mom OG after Bristol Palin announced that she wouldn’t be returning to the show. This wasn’t McKee’s first appearance in the franchise, as she had been one of the original cast members of Teen Mom‘s predecessor, 16 and Pregnant, as well as Teen Mom 3. She recently made headlines centered around cheating allegations against her husband, which appears to be an ongoing situation.
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