Girl Meets Boy! Danielle Fishel found her happily ever after in husband Jensen Karp — and their love story is still going strong.
Although many fans of the Boy meets world alum with one of her several former costars, including Ben Savage and Rider strongFishel has considered neither to be more than a childhood crush.
“I was in love with Rider. He was so smart and… one of my favorite things about Rider – and it continues to this day – Rider is very ebullient,” Fishel confessed on an August 2022 episode of “Pod Meets World,” which she along with Strong and Will Friedel. ‘He’ll tell you how he feels and he’s very free with his compliments, but he doesn’t just throw them away. When he compliments you, it’s thoughtful, meaningful, and you can tell it’s coming from a very real place.
Strong, who starred alongside Fishel’s Topanga Lawrence Shawn Hunter on the Disney Channel series, was surprised by the revelation.
“That’s not true. That’s not true, you never told me. Did you keep that for 30 years?” he asked. “So… I was your first celebrity crush. [It was] Jonathan Taylor Thomas and I. You really had the teen magazine covered all the way to the ’90s.
The Girl meets world alum later told listeners she also tested her chemistry with Savage, who played her TV love interest Cory Matthews for seven seasons in the ’90s and three seasons of the 2000s spinoff.
“[Ben and I] looked at each other after all those weeks of playing boyfriend and girlfriend [and] all the kissing and we just looked at each other like, ‘Shall we just have dinner one night?’” Fishel recalls. “Soon during the meal we realized that this was a difficult line to cross. … it was very clear that no, what we had was just a really nice, non-romantic one [connection].”
The Arizona native eventually began dating people outside of her Disney bubble, including Tim Beluskowhom she married in October 2013. However, the couple’s marriage was short-lived and they called it quits in March 2016.
Fishel found love for the second time with Karp, with whom she was first linked in June 2017 after the unleashed producer shared a sweet photo of her with a cat via his Instagram page.
The pair said “I do” in November 2018 after getting engaged earlier that year.
“I would say it’s medium and I’m going to say it’s not traditional,” Fishel told me exclusively Us weekly of the wedding plans in October 2018. “It’s a bit quirky, just like us.”
She added: “I am [on] cloud nine. He is the most wonderful partner anyone could ever hope for. And so I’m just excited. I’m really looking forward to building a life with him.”
On the couple’s one-year anniversary, Karp gushed about his wife and the life they built together.
“One year ago today I married the best person on earth. I know people say things like that all the time, and it’s an exaggeration – but I do believe she is. She has made every day brighter, every joke funnier and every hug more comfortable,” the filmmaker wrote via Instagram in November 2019. “We’ve been through so much in the past year, including welcoming our young Marv Albert into this world, and yet you’ve been able to take on the job of mother with even more passion and highly detailed Navy SEAL-like precision than I expected. You have been my partner, my best friend and my wife for a year now! I love you very much.”
The couple, who share two sons, have continued to sing their praises since they tied the knot. On Fishel’s birthday in May 2020, Karp called her the “best thing that ever happened to me.”
Scroll down to relive the relationship between Fishel and Karp from the beginning: