The Untold Truth of The Little Couple

From the moment The Little Couple premiered on TLC in 2009, the show's stars Bill Klein and Jen Arnold have garnered millions of fans' hearts with their picture-perfect marriage and sweet family.

As the series' official description explains, Klein and Arnold "are just like your average couple — except for the fact that they're both under 4 feet tall! He stands at 4 feet and has a rare variation of a skeletal dysplasia called Spondyloepiphyseal Dysplasia (or SED) and has had more than 20 surgeries. She stands at just 3 foot 2 has a similar, and also rare type of dwarfism called Spondyloepiphyseal Dysplasia Type Strudwick, has had more than 30 surgeries — and yet this too is not what makes this couple unique."

The Little Couple documents all of their hardships and successes, as well as the adventures of their two adorable children, Will and Zoey, and is an undeniable smash hit. But there's more to this show than meets the eye.

Although the family regularly celebrates special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries on camera, all that fanfare isn't actually real. The truth is, it's staged especially for the show. Maybe we should clarify a bit. Yes, the occasions themselves are legit, but as Arnold explained to Huffington Post in 2011, the family chooses to host the real celebrations when cameras aren't rolling.

"We try to remind each other that dinners out with the cameras don't really count and that we still need to have a separate celebratory dinner for us, for birthdays and anniversaries," she said. "Even though we celebrate on camera, we do something separate as well."

It makes sense that a family so much in the public eye would want to keep some occasions and special events private, so we can't say we blame them. Plus, it means double the celebrating (and we're assuming that also means double the cake).

As fans of the show know, Arnold works as a neonatologist at the Texas Children's Hospital and, sometimes, she shoots scenes for The Little Couple while at work. But as she revealed in a 2013 interview with Glamour, it took a lot of time and effort to convince the hospital to allow camera crews inside.

"When the show became a reality, we got in touch with the PR folks there, but there was a lot of hesitation," she told the magazine. "As a hospital, they have a lot to lose, and they wanted to make sure it would show the hospital in a good light."

"A lot of conversations took place with our production company, LMNO, and the hospital administration, and they were able to come up with an agreement," she continued. "LMNO was great and had done shows in other hospitals, so I think everybody felt more comfortable."

The Little Couple has garnered countless fans over the years with episodes of the reality show averaging a whopping 2.1 million viewers back in 2013. But despite its popularity and overall positive nature, the show's stars have endured their fair share of criticism, especially when it comes to their parenting. It may be hard to believe, but when Arnold and Klein first announced they were adopting not one, but two kids — 3-year-old William from China and 19-month-old Zoey from India — they received a deluge of "comments on how crazy it is to be adopting two kids at once."

The couple explained the decision to adopt two children around the same time wasn't planned, but it was meant to be. When Klein and Arnold started the 11 month-long adoption process for William in 2012, they had no idea that they would also receive a call from Little People of America about adopting Zoey, as they had actually put their names on the LPA waiting list four years earlier.

"I guess we kind of looked at it as, you know, there are a bunch of other people, friends of ours, that have two, three, some even four kids, you know, they haven't killed each other yet," Klein joked while speaking with The Wrap. "For those people who said, 'You're crazy,' well, it's just kind of like life," Arnold added. "Like getting pregnant with twins, it's not something we planned on. But hopefully, it's a blessing that we'll figure out a way to handle."

As with many court battles, the drama didn't stop with just one side filing suit. Discovery was quick to jump into the fray by filing a cross-claim against LMNO, calling the accountant that LMNO had dubbed an extortionist a whistleblower, and thanking him for showing Discovery how it "was being systematically defrauded via inflated production costs for these shows."

Discovery further said that upon investigating LMNO's practices, they found them to be "inconsistent with Discovery's contractual rights" and therefore they "decided to terminate certain of our contracts with LMNO, based on the results of a lengthy review of long-standing production agreements which revealed procedures and practices that did not respect Discovery's contractual rights."

As the battle between LMNO Cable Group and Discovery Communications raged on, Arnold and Klein finally had enough in May 2017 and filed papers in a California federal court, "making their first move at ultimately rescinding intellectual-property rights they've conveyed and collecting what they believe to be their rightful share of contingent compensation from the series," revealed the Hollywood Reporter.

As the couple's lawyers, Jennifer McGrath and Neville Johnson, explained, "Intervenors have now learned that LMNO engaged in systematic fraud against them and Discovery by grossly inflating purported expenses, falsifying accounting documents, and falsely contending that no contingent compensation was due to Intervenors." What the couple is asking for is "compensatory damages, punitive damages and emotional-distress damages."

Soon after Arnold and Klein adopted their son Will from China and while they were working everything out to finalize the adoption of their daughter Zoey from India, the couple got some surprising news. "'I'm pregnant,' [Jen said in] complete and utter disbelief," Klein recalled in the couple's 2016 book, Think Big: Overcoming Obstacles With Optimism. "After going through two years of fertility treatments and surrogacy followed by miscarriages, this was unexpected, to say the least!"

Unfortunately, they later learned the heart-breaking news that the pregnancy was not viable. Even so, Klein couldn't help but sum up his life with Arnold so far as an "incredible and crazy and extraordinary road full of wonderful surprises." One that their two adoptive children make all the more incredible. "I will see Jen's beautiful smile, and Will's never-ending joy, and Zoey enthusiastically hopping and skipping along, and just think, 'When did I win the Powerball of life?'" Klein concluded.

Between working, raising a family and filming a hit reality show, Arnold also finds time to get political. In July 2017 she headed to Washington D.C. where she spoke out against "proposed cuts to Medicaid" and joined "the Children's Hospital Association for a day of meetings with members of Congress." As reported by the Washington Post, this included "confabs with Republicans who have supported the proposed cuts to Medicaid."

"The timing is critical," Arnold said of her lobbying. "The BCRA is scary — it would cut $43 billion in Medicaid funding, which would more negatively affect kids than adults. We have to speak out. We have to talk to our congresspeople."

And she's not the only one in the family getting political! Arnold was joined by her hubby and kids who weren't shy about getting involved, as she documented on Instagram. "Today I get to help #SpeakNowforKids! Learn why children's health care is so important," she wrote, posting a photo of Zoey followed by one of Will, which she captioned, "Will on The Hill! You can advocate today to! Contact your members of Congress and tell them to protect children's health care!"

For as long as the show has been on the air, Jen Arnold, Bill Klein, and their two kids have been living in Houston, Texas, where Arnold worked as the medical director of the Simulation Center at Texas Children's Hospital, as well as the assistant professor of pediatrics in the Division of Neonatology at Baylor College of Medicine.

However, in July 2017 the family packed up its belongings and mad a big move to Florida! The move was driven by Arnold's decision to accept the position of medical director of the Simulation Center at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg. She also agreed to work as a "part-time assistant professor with Johns Hopkins University" and coach parents on "how they should care for premature babies when they take them home."

As the hospital points out on its blog, the move down South is a homecoming for Arnold, who was born in St. Petersburg and "first came to Johns Hopkins All Children's as an infant in the neonatal intensive care unit." She even tied the knot at the St. Petersburg's St Mary Our Lady of Grace Church, which is "near the hospital campus".

In a 2017 statement, Arnold expressed excitement about the move. "I'm thrilled to return home to Florida," she said. "The opportunity at Johns Hopkins All Children's is a perfect fit personally for me, my husband and two kids and professionally with the growing education and research resources at the hospital."

Shortly after the family packed up and moved to Florida, they had to weather a (literal) storm when the region was hit by Hurricane Irma at the end of August 2017. The pair chose to seek refuge at Arnold's parents' home, and the doctor took to Instagram to document the family's tumultuous journey.

"Well, there is no gas in Florida it seems, but we are fortunate," she told followers in one of a series of clips. "We actually did find some gas after hunting for quite some time. But I can't believe how many gas stations are emptied."  

This wasn't Arnold's first time facing a major storm, however. In fact, it seems that the mom of two is haunted by them everywhere she goes. "I have a history, and it's getting a little weird, about hurricanes following me," she told fans in another clip. "My family calls me a hurricane magnet," she proclaimed, adding, "I have been followed by hurricanes in Orlando, Miami, Pittsburgh, Houston and now St. Petersburg."

Her first-ever encounter actually came in 1992. "Turns out that when I had my first night in college as a freshman at University of Miami, when I was becoming a Hurricane, I went through Andrew," she recalled. "The eye went over us. The whole building shook, we were evacuated. After three or four days, we had to be rescued and taken out of school."

The complicated, headline-making legal struggle involving Arnold and Klein in June 2016 finally came to an end in March 2018. If you don't recall the gritty details, LMNO Productions accused Discovery Communications of breaching their contract, and the latter retaliated, claiming that LMNO was guilty of accounting fraud.

Although the exact terms are being kept under wraps and will remain confidential, as Variety reported, the nearly two-year legal struggle has ended in "an amicable settlement" that (perhaps surprisingly) is "to the mutual satisfaction of both parties."

That being said, LMNO's time under the microscope is actually far from over, as the production company has more litigation to deal with — and this time, it's directly with Arnold and Klein. The couple filed their own claim, alleging that the company was not transparent in its earnings and owes them money.

The reality TV stars actually went as far as to try to "block the settlement" between Discovery Communications and LMNO Productions, but their injunction was denied. Even so, they haven't given up and are still pursuing LMNO.