When Chelsie Dort joined the dating app Tinder in 2013, the single mom proudly shared photos of her toddler son, Jaxden, on her profile.
“I’d begin each conversation by disclosing that I had a child," Dort, 35, tells TODAY.com. “That way they could decide if they wanted to proceed.
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Then a 22-year-old divorcée with a young kid, Dort didn’t expect to get many matches. But that wasn’t the case. Much to her surprise, plenty of men were eager to take her out. But when things got serious, they would disappear.
“I’d get ghosted as soon as I suggested that they meet Jaxden,” Dort recalls. “The reality of being with someone who has kids was just too much for them.”
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“It got to the point where I was like, I don’t think I can keep doing this,’” she adds. So Dort decided to take a break from Tinder.
When Dort returned to the app a few months later, she picked up a conversation with a “very attractive” man named Bedford. Dort agreed to meet Bedford for breakfast at the Black Bear Diner in Sandy, Utah. But there was one caveat: Dort was bringing her 2-year-old son. Bedford said he didn’t have any issues with that.
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“I remember thinking, ‘This is going to be a one-and-done thing. We’d go out and that would be it,’” Bedford, 37, tells TODAY, noting that at 26, he was in “no position to be a dad figure.”
“All of his pictures were shirtless,” Dort says, with a laugh.
While Dort and Bedford attempted to get to know each other over pancakes, Jaxden treated his mother's breakfast date to the full toddler experience.
“Jax was sticking his fingers in jam packets and he kept crawling under the table,” Dort says. “Then he refused to eat the food that Bedford had ordered for him. He was like, ‘No, no! I don’t like it.’ And I was like, I’m never going to hear from this guy again.’”
He proposed six months later.
Bedford acknowledges it was a bold move for his wife to bring a Jaxden on their first date. But he says it was also smart.
“She made it real right off the bat. I’ve never known anything but Chelsie with a kid,” he explains. “We’ve always had Jaxden. That’s how our relationship was built.”
Every year, on July 24, the Dorts return to the Black Bear Diner, but these days, they need a bigger booth. The couple are parents of Jaxden, 13, Ryker, 10, Mya, 7, Naomi, 5, and Sloane, 3.
"It's surreal to go back there with this beautiful family we created together," Dort says. "I look forward to that breakfast every year. It's a reminder of where we started, and what we've built since then."
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
