In October 2023, Brown told Glamour magazine that she never dreamed about getting married before meeting Bongiovi.
“My dream was to have a baby,” Brown said. “I wanted to be the woman that my mom is to me and I wanted to be the woman that my grandmother was to me. So that was never my, like, intention, to be a wife.”
Brown continued: “But after meeting Jake and seeing, ‘Oh, I don’t have to be this stereotypical wife for him. He doesn’t want me to be that either. He wants me to go and do my thing and live my life, and he will hold my hand in the process of that.’ I was like, ‘Oh, I do want this.’”
Brown continued, telling Glamour that when she met Bongiovi, her idea of a relationship with men meant she wasn’t allowed to take up too much space.
“I think I was so afraid to be a strong woman in a relationship,” Brown said.
“When I met Jake. I just felt I could be loud. He embraced that and encouraged that. And I fell in love with myself while being with him,” the “Nineteen Steps” author said. “He was a really big, huge part of me loving myself and becoming a woman. It was like, ‘Wow, I really love this person because he allows me to love myself.’”