TikTok couple Matt and Abby deny leaving their children alone while on cruise - who are social media couple?

Profile of TikTok couple Matt and Abby Howard, who have denied leaving their children alone while on a cruise. Photo by TikTok/@matt_and_abby.Profile of TikTok couple Matt and Abby Howard, who have denied leaving their children alone while on a cruise. Photo by TikTok/@matt_and_abby.
Profile of TikTok couple Matt and Abby Howard, who have denied leaving their children alone while on a cruise. Photo by TikTok/@matt_and_abby. | TikTok/@matt_and_abby
TikTok couple Matt and Abby Howard have said it is “completely untrue” that they left their two young sons alone while they ate on a family cruise.

The trouble began for the couple, who rose to online fame on the social media platform in 2021, last week when Abby posted a video to her Instagram Stories showing the pair watching their children sleeping on baby monitors via Facetime while they had dinner. This caused backlash as viewers assumed they had left the children alone in their cabin - but the couple have now denied this.

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“We take our role as parents extremely seriously and we love our children more than anything in the entire world. We’re very protective of our kids,” Matt, aged 26, said in a video shared in to their TikTok channel on Monday (September 16). “People started to speculate and believe that we had left our children alone in their staterooms and that is just completely untrue. He went on: “We had someone with our children at all times on this boat. Period.”

He explained that the couple had been on a seven night cruise with their sons; Griffin, two, and August, one, and his wife’s extended family, and Abby said that she understood where the “misunderstanding” came from after her Instagram Story went viral. “I ended up deleting it several hours after posting it because I could see that it was causing concern and misunderstanding. I do want to say thank you so much to those of you that were concerned about the safety and wellbeing of our children,” she added.

She also said that the safety of her “precious” son’s is her “main concern”, while her husband echoed that their safety was “extremely important”. The TikTok star, age 25, went on to clear up the “baby monitor situation.” Abby explained that the boys sleep in a “blackout tent” that has a place for a monitor. “We always turn their monitor on so we can watch and see what’s happening inside the tent - make sure they’re OK, see if they’ve fallen asleep or if they’ve woken up. We just love to have eyes on them, we’re always concerned about them.”

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She went on to explain that she and Matt would “take turns” being with their sons and kept the video call on, even if they weren’t the ones actually attending to the boys. Matt also thanked the family members, who included Abby’s grandma, who had helped them to look after their boys so that they had chance to leave their room. The couple concluded their video by thanking viewers for “listening” to their side of the story.

Who are TikTok couple Matt and Abby?

Matt, 26, and Abby, 25, are a married couple with two young sons living near Phoenix, Arizona. They have been working on their YouTube and TikTok careers for several years, but it really started taking off for them in 2021.

The couple first met at a St. Louis, Missouri, theatre camp and dated long distance during high school. Abby is from Illinois originally, while Matt is from Missouri, approximately a four hour drive away. They reunited when they both went to college at Missouri State University, which resulted in them getting married during their sophomore year in 2019 - after got engaged at Disney World.

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It was during the pandemic, in 2020, that they really started posting about their relationship on YouTube and TikTok. They didn’t start to gain a big following until 2021, when they announced they were pregnant with their first child, Griffin.

Then, at the end of 2022, when Griffin was just five-months-old, Abby found out she was unexpectedly pregnant again. The couple recorded their candid, somewhat terrified, reactions to the positive pregnancy test. This is when their online fame really boomed. They now have more than five million followers.

After their TikTok follower count began to grow they launched a podcast called Unplanned, where they initially spoke about their second pregnancy. They then moved on to discuss other family and relationship topics - and they have caused controversy. ” In one episode, he told a mortified Abby that she does, in his opinion, “feel different down there” after having babies. In another, he asked her why she eats as much as he does since she’s smaller than he is. Then, earlier this year, they posted a TikTok video where they said they were cancelling Father’s Day - because it clashed with Matt’s birthday - and would instead celebrate it in September.

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