Chase Chrisley Saved by Love! Mystery Girlfriend Helped Him Quit Booze and Rebuild His Life!

Chase Chrisley and Jodi Laine Fournerat are sharing a glimpse into their love story in a major first for the couple.

As they spoke about their work tied to Chase’s new alcohol-free seltzer brand, Gold Drop, out July 1, the pair opened up about their journey together throughout their two-year relationship.

“We met through mutual friends, and then I went on her Instagram, and just liked a bunch of pictures back, to back, to back, to back, to back. And she called me out for it on her Story,” Chase, 29, recalls. “And I was like, ‘The hell is wrong with you? Why would you do that?'”

“The rest is history,” says Jodi.

“Yeah, the rest is history,” Chase continues. “We hung out, and it’s literally been history ever since.”

Chase and Jodi “did long distance” for “a year” before she eventually moved from Louisiana to Tennessee, where the reality star resides. At the time, she was a full-time surgical tech.

“I was on call all the time, I was working weekends, so I would come in as much as I could to Nashville, but it was definitely a lot easier for Chase to be able to fly in,” Jodi explains. “I would only be able to stay for typically a weekend, versus Chase would come in, and he would be able to stay for two weeks, three weeks.”

“But then, I was sitting there while she was in surgery for 12 hours, like, ‘What am I supposed to do?'” Chase shares.

The Chrisley Knows Best alum is in awe of Jodi, as he notes how he’s “never been with a woman that has the work ethic that she has,” which was “refreshing for me to see.” He also credits Jodi for being “a big reason why I quit drinking, too.”

 

“Without her support throughout the last two years of my parents being gone, I really don’t know where I would be, if I would even be here,” he candidly states, referencing his parents Todd and Julie Chrisley’s former imprisonment.

Chase is launching a new business endeavor, a zero-alcohol sparkling water brand called Gold Drop. Jodi has been supportive throughout the process, even helping with integral parts of the company.

“I pushed him a lot to find his own path and figure out a career other than film,” she says.

“And just because [of] the scenario that they were dealt with, I mean, exactly what happened, you can’t rely on that forever,” Jodi adds, referencing the cancellation of the Chrisley family’s USA Network shows after Todd, 57, and Julie, 52, were sentenced to a combined 19 years for fraud and tax evasion.

“You never know what’s going to happen and what the future’s going to hold,” she continues. “So yeah, it was super encouraging for him to figure out other business deals, and whatever else he enjoyed, and felt like it could turn into a future for him.”

Jodi says she “was definitely a big part of helping him and encouraging him to realize his self-worth and what he could do,” and she’s even lent her expertise to help build up Gold Drop and Chase’s other business endeavors.

“My background is in the medical field, which is what I did previously to moving here. The role’s kind of changed because Chase is in this film world, and he’s always traveling and moving. So I’ve pretty much been behind the scenes of it all, and helping him with his businesses,” she explains. “I do a little bit of social media stuff on the side, you know, one of those typical blogger influencers. But yeah, I’m more there for Chase right now, just trying to help him to get his business up and rolling. I’ve been helping him set up the foundation to donate a portion of the proceeds with the seltzers.”

Chase notes that Jodi is “helping a lot with the foundation” he’s launching soon, which he says will “help people that didn’t have the money to have a fair trial, or people that have been wrongly convicted, or if it’s just helping families go visit their loved ones that are in another state, like my parents were, and they don’t have the means to do that.”

Given Jodi’s assistance in this and beyond, from Chase’s viewpoint, he feels that “most importantly, she’s really been like the rock.”

“She’s had plenty of opportunities and plenty of reasons to leave me. She stuck with me through the hardest time of my life. There’s no way I would’ve quit drinking and got sober if it wasn’t for her,” the Chase Chrisley Collection founder continues. “At the end of the day, I made the decision for myself, but without her support, it wouldn’t have happened. My vision had been so cloudy and foggy for so long because I had been drinking and doing the TV lifestyle.”

Chase says he has “learned throughout my relationships in the past relationships” that he doesn’t “need to share everything,” which he believes has been beneficial to the success of his current romance.

“I feel like we already give, or speaking for myself, I’ve already given a lot of my privacy away, that I’m not going to get back. And so I think some things are more valuable, and it doesn’t open us up to an outsider coming in trying to hurt or mess up what we’ve got going on,” he shares. “So I think that’s why we’ve stayed a little more private. I mean, we’ll post every now and then, but I’d rather be happy in person than be happy on Instagram.”

Agreeing with that sentiment, Jodi notes that they still “have a lot of love and support, and there’s more love than there is hate” since going public with their love.

“But the internet’s the internet, and it gets to me sometimes because it’s like if I share every bit of my life and his life together, then there’s so much more criticizing,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what you post or how much you post, people are still going to think that they know you better than you know yourselves and then it puts it out there. And so it’s been a lot more refreshing to not hide out, but just live our lives without having to show everyone every single step and day.”

Fans will get to see more of Chase and Jodi’s relationship on the Chrisley family’s new Lifetime docuseries, on which the businessman serves as one of the executive producers alongside sister Savannah Chrisley.

“She’s in every episode,” says Chase.

“Chase reminded me, he was like, ‘You’re part of my life, which means you need to be a part of the show, because it’s based on my life. I want you to be a part of it.’ He obviously let me make that decision,” Jodi explains. “He didn’t tell me what I could and couldn’t do, but he was like, ‘I would love for you to be a part of it.'”

“I love and appreciate everything that he’s offered me, and he wants to help me, but I was just raised where you make your own living and you succeed in your own ways. I’m more independent in that way,” she continues. “So yes, I filmed, and I was part of the new season, and I look forward to whatever the future may hold.”

To that, Chase concludes: “She’s going to be on TV for a long time.”