Joey Lawrence’s dedication to fostering his close relationships helped strengthen his marriage to Samantha Cope.
“Every situation will make you stronger if you’re willing to put the work in,” Joey, 49, told Us Weekly exclusively while promoting the upcoming graphic novel The Lawrence Brothers Detective Agency along with brothers Matthew and Andy Lawrence. “Life is a very imperfect, bumpy journey. We make all of our mistakes down here, I really do believe that. I know that for a fact, because I’ve made a ton and continue to make mistakes.”
Joey added, “Everything takes work. Any relationship takes work, no matter what with friends, siblings — Matt, Andy and I put a ton of work into our relationship — and we continue to work through it as we grow, as we became men.”
He told Us that he tries “to put the work in” every day with “all my relationships” — but with Cope, 38, especially.
“I love her to death, and we’re just spending every day just working away at it,” Joey shared. “It feels good to put the work in and see results from that.”
The Melissa & Joey alum added that nothing should be “cruise control” in life.
Joey met Cope on the set of a Lifetime movie and started their love story in 2021. They were engaged by August of that year and got married in May 2022. The couple welcomed daughter Dylan Rose in January 2023. (Joey is also the father to daughters Charleston, 19, and Liberty, 15, whom he shares with ex-wife Chandie Yawn-Nelson.)
Us Weekly confirmed in August 2024 that Cope had filed for divorce from Joey, but they reconciled by December of that year, with Cope filing to dismiss her petition.
Aside from working on his relationship, Joey is continuing to team up with his brothers, Matthew, 45, and Andy, 37. The trio, who host the “Brotherly Love” podcast, collaborated with Z2 to release The Lawrence Brothers Detective Agency graphic novel. (TLC’s Chilli, who has been dating Matthew since 2022, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Raven-Symoné and Will Friedle have also joined the detective agency.)
Joey told Us that this project “was 15 years in the making” before actually coming to fruition. According to Matthew, they were “all on a family vacation” and “coming up with these scenes” in their heads.
“We were thinking of them in this animated, kind of, graphic novel way. For some reason, we wound up on being a detective agency,” Matthew explained. “We all had a little experience on the procedural drama TV shows.”
He added, “We wanted to take license that you just couldn’t take in any other medium. We loved it.”
Matthew said “it faded away” at first, but the idea came back when the brothers teamed up with Ben and Max Berkowitz — the Berkowitz Brothers — who run a production company that creates and develops comic books. (Andy revealed that he was “the most obsessed” with comics when the three of them were growing up.)
The stories have become “slightly meta,” Joey said. “I think we’re going to be looking for lost child stars from the ‘90s and their paraphernalia or things that might have gone missing. Special props that they used to use that somebody stole, we have to go find. But the universe is expansive.”
The trio and their creative partners have launched a Kickstarter — which hopes to raise $50,000 by Saturday, August 23 — to help fund their goal. Joey said the support they’ve seen for the project so far is “so wild.”
“Our fans don’t know us for anything like this, but our community has been so amazing for 40 years and continues to support us and blows our minds in a lot of different ways,” he added. “So we’re very thankful for that.”
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