Kailyn Lowry Opens Up About Life After Reality TV, 15 Years After Her Memorable 16 and Pregnant Episode (Exclusive)

Kailyn Lowry is living a life beyond her wildest dreams.

The world was introduced to Lowry as an athletic 17-year-old expectant mom with a tough home life on 16 and Pregnant's second season on MTV. But the episode's account of the young mom's story barely scratched the surface.

Lowry, now 33, would open up about her life increasingly in the years that followed — as a member of the cast of MTV's Teen Mom 2, in her New York Times bestselling memoir Pride Over Pity, and on any number of the podcasts she's hosted or helped bring into the world,

It all started back in rural Pennsylvania, where Lowry grew up moving around a lot and watching her single mom struggle to make ends meet while also struggling with addiction. When Lowry found herself pregnant by her high school boyfriend, Jo Rivera, she knew she wanted to keep her baby.

Simultaneously, she saw girls just like her doing the same. She remembers taking in the much-discussed first season of the MTV reality series, just like so many girls coming of age at the time.

"I remember seeing 16 and Pregnant season 1 — Maci, Catelynn, Amber. I remember watching their stories play out in real time and then I was already pregnant," Lowry tells PEOPLE.

"I went on MTV.com and it said, 'Now Casting.' So I just quickly sent in a little synopsis of my story and then the rest was history."

Even then, Lowry was used to life throwing her for a loop. By the time she heard back from MTV and agreed to let cameras document her pregnancy, her situation had already changed significantly.

"I was no longer even living with my mom. I was already living with Jo and his parents," she says.

16 and Pregnant viewers watched Lowry lean on Rivera's family as she tried to work on her relationship with her mom. She gives credit to his mom, Janet, for "doing the best she knew to do."

"She probably felt like her hands were sort of tied. When you have teenagers that are that age, which is now Isaac's age, they do have opinions and voices of their own," she says.

"You can't make a teenager do anything. And so I think that she did the best that she could for what we were all dealing with."

Things between Lowry and Rivera ultimately wouldn't work out. By the time Teen Mom 2 picked up with the two episodes that began airing in early 2011, they had split.

Lowry would face typical teenage and young adult struggles in figuring out her personal life. But the young mom worked hard to give herself and son Isaac, born on Jan. 18, 2010, a good life. She was persistent in working as much as her childcare situation would allow, and she never stopped dreaming big for their futures.

"[It comes] purely out of survival," she shares. "My entire childhood was me trying to survive and me trying to navigate living this weird life where I didn't have parents. My mom was in and out, I didn't know my dad, and so I would do anything basically to get by, go under the radar."

"Even to this day, I adapt very quickly and I try my best to just keep reaching for the next thing. Whatever ideas that I have, I don't stay too content where I'm at because things can and will change very quickly."

As part of that drive forward, Lowry continued sharing her life on MTV, even when it was hard. She didn't always feel like her story was being delivered with consideration for the hardships she faced, she says. Still, she was led by that feeling of "pure desperation."

"I needed money. I needed to go to college. I needed to be able to provide for myself and for my son. And at that time — by April I knew that I was going to be trying to get out of Jo's parents' house pretty quickly — so there was just desperation to find stability on my own."

She adds, "That's not saying that Jo's family wouldn't have helped me, but I needed to be out on my own and to know that I could do it. And financially speaking, that was the driving force."

As Lowry's story unfolded, viewers saw her find love with Javi Marroquin and grow her family with son Lincoln, now 11. The marriage with Marroquin ended in 2016. Later, she dated Chris Lopez, welcoming sons Lux and Creed, now 7½ and 4½.

Lowry felt "pigeonholed" by how she was portrayed on the show, explaining that she became selective of what she shared in response to how she was edited and then, in turn, how fans would react to her decisions.

"I think closer to the time that I decided to leave the franchise, it was more of [me feeling] like, 'I am making very calculated decisions and sharing only certain things or making myself available at certain times for certain reasons,' " she explains.

"It made it very difficult for production to create a full picture and full story for me on the show. At that point it was like, 'I have to think about how it's going to play out for the viewers and that is how people will perceive whatever it is that I'm going through or doing.' And that was really, really hard for me because I wasn't the same person that I was when I started."

"I wasn't even the same person as I was in the middle of the 13 years that I was on TV. So that became really challenging."

By 2022, Lowry knew she was ready to move on from the series. During the season 11 reunion, she confirmed that decision to fans. She remembers feeling her time on the show "had run its course."

"I had just built this house and we were on to different things that we would not be able to tell the full story the way that we wanted to and the way that it really happened. You're edited down to four minutes a cast member, and I didn't want certain things to not be shown. I wanted more of a full picture," she explains.

At the time, Lowry began dating now-fiancé Elijah Scott. Faced with introducing another partner to the reality TV world, Lowry realized she preferred to just move on.

"He had never been on TV. He's never been a teen dad. And so, for us, I had felt like it was time for us to move on. I'm thankful that I was on it. I don't have many regrets about it. To this day, I think it was the right decision."

With the reality TV chapter of her life behind her, Lowry was able to move forward and focus on her growing podcast empire. After starting on Coffee Convos with Lindsie Chrisley in 2017 she added, Baby Mamas, No Drama and Barely Famous to her slate. Today, the KILLR podcast network consists of Coffee Convos, Vibin' and Kinda Thrivin', Barely Famous, Karma & Chaos, For the Hayters and Cate and Ty: Break It Down.

"It started as a passion project. I didn't even know the money that was in podcasting or that it could be a career, and that there are people that have networks and things like that," she says.

"It was sort of like rolling the dice and seeing what happens. And then it really took off. And I think to my surprise as well as Lindsie's, I think we did not know what we had. We were pleasantly surprised with it."

Lowry has also devoted her all to her family life, growing her family to seven children with the addition of her three with Scott: twins Verse and Valley, 17 months, and 2-year-old son Rio. Finding herself at drastically different places in her life with each pregnancy, Lowry has learned, "All stages of motherhood are better and worse than others for different reasons."

"With Isaac, it was just me and him, so I felt like I had a real control on my motherhood in terms of me being a good mother to him. But financially speaking, it was very, very difficult. Then years go by and I have more children, I'm stable. I was married at the time, and so we tried for a baby and it wasn't unexpected. And so there's just very different struggles, different pros and cons. So I wouldn't say they're easier or harder, just very different," she says.

Coparenting also looks very different for Lowry these days. She's come to a place of acceptance that her relationships with the men she shares her children with will always ebb and flow, some more than others.

"I think that the unique situation that Jo and I are in is that we were together as teenagers. I don't want to speak for him, but I would guess that he probably feels the same way in that, we're so far removed from that. It doesn't feel like he's my ex. It's like I'm coparenting with somebody I just know."

Noting that they have "for the most part, gotten through most of the hard stuff," she knows the future will be a wild one as Issac comes into taking the reins on his own life.

As for Marroquin, the coparents recently revealed a change in their custody arrangement as his Air Force position requires him to move to Virginia. No matter what curveballs are thrown at them, however, "Javi and I always work really hard to keep things in the best interest of Lincoln. That's never been a question for either of us."

While she acknowledges many a "difficult period" between herself and Lopez, she simply says that with that coparenting dynamic, she's learned "they can't all be great."

"Elijah and I are really good parents. And coparents too, because you do coparent when you're in a relationship too. You come together and make joint decisions, which is tough when you grow up differently and have different parenting views or perspectives."

On the business front, Lowry never stops looking out for what's next, still driven by the instinct that it could all be gone tomorrow.

"I understand that podcasting might not be a forever thing, so I'm always thinking about the next project that I can work on that will propel me to the next thing. I feel like I can't stay put too long. Nobody knows what's going to happen. And so it has sort of created this business brain for me where I know that I have to already work on the next thing while I'm in my current project," she says.

It all started with Lowry and Isaac, and today, she's proud and excited to learn more about the person he's becoming. Recently, he's thrived by getting involved in theater and is an avid learner of American Sign Language (ASL). She's excited to see where life will take them both, as well as the rest of their family.

Through their humble start on 16 and Pregnant to a life that has recently included international trips and interviewing a Spice Girl, Lowry is hoping people get to know the woman she is today.

Asked what she thinks the next 15 years might have in store, she admits she doesn't see herself staying in the spotlight.

"I hope to build successful brands to the point where I'm able to take a step back from, because I think a part that gets overlooked a lot is that everything that I do rides on my name. With that comes the fact that I was on Teen Mom, because that's where my following came from," she says.

"I hope to potentially keep building the brands to the point where people don't necessarily remember me as someone on Teen Mom. It's building something to a place where I can take a step back and not be the face of everything. I think that would be the goal for the next 15 years."