Things went sideways for Nicole Curtis very early in life. She was a mere 17 years old when she packed her bags and left home to start a new life with her boyfriend. Now, she’s a former HGTV star, with millions having watched her show “Rehab Addict” since it first aired in 2010. The road to success wasn’t easy, however.

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Curtis stumbled upon her life’s passion after she and her boyfriend bought their first dilapidated house in Tampa, Florida. They welcomed their first child there, but the relationship ended in shambles. Curtis found herself navigating life as a single mother, holding down several jobs to make ends meet. One of these jobs was working as a real-estate agent, and that’s where a production company first saw her potential for HGTV. Thanks to her rocky past, Curtis still finds it hard to enjoy her success — or believe in its longevity. “I’ve never enjoyed the moment because I know it can go away at any time,” she confessed to Country Living in 2017.

In her memoir, “Better Than New: Lessons I’ve Learned from Saving Old Homes (and How They Saved Me),” Curtis revealed more about her youth and her decision to drop out of high school and leave home. “My parents’ generation was taught that you stayed in a good job, raised your kids, retired, and collected your pension,” she wrote. “The closer I got to graduating high school, the more I knew I had to follow a different path. Telling me no just meant I would be all the more determined.” She might be a star now, but Curtis is very open about her struggles, telling Country Living, “My life is absolutely not perfect.”

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In May 2022, Nicole Curtis opened up about why she took a step back from HGTV in 2018. It turns out the design star and mother of two sons, Ethan and Harper, just really needed a break. “I was completely burned out,” Curtis confessed to People. “There was so much time in those ten years where I didn’t get to enjoy it at all. I was stressed out.” She explained how she did most of the heavy lifting required for the show with little to no help, all while being a single mom. “I had a very chaotic ten years. I didn’t want to go down that path again,” the designer told the outlet.

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The worst part is that Curtis deeply regrets the time she missed out on with her kids while working her butt off. “When we were first shooting the show, my son was in sixth grade,” she told Fox News. She reasoned with herself that all the long, grueling hours she was putting in at work was for her family, but looking back, she admits she was prioritizing earning more money over her kids. “I was chasing the money. I was chasing that money hard because I wanted a better life for us,” Curtis confessed. If she could give her younger self advice, it would be to put her kids before everything, no matter the sacrifices required. “They can all wait. Your children can’t,” she mused. “If I could get those years back, I would trade everything in a heartbeat.”

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Nicole Curtis has undergone a stunning transformation over the years, but behind the scenes, she was a single mom trying to do the best for her small family. She found love again with Shane Maguire, but the relationship ended in heartbreak after Curtis realized she was pregnant. At 38 and heading a successful HGTV show, circumstances that were much better than the ones under which she first got pregnant, but history seemed determined to repeat itself. In her memoir, “Better Than New: Lessons I’ve Learned from Saving Old Homes (and How They Saved Me),” Curtis recalled being excited to tell Maguire the news, but his reaction was the opposite of what she had expected.

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“I had wanted my fabulous Mister to look at me with tears in his eyes and say what I was thinking: that this was the greatest thing we’d never asked for,” she wrote. Instead, the opposite happened, and the couple’s relationship didn’t survive the duration of the pregnancy. “I’ve had good relationships and positive experiences and I wish they were all like that, but unfortunately they aren’t,” Curtis told People. Her ex’s lawyer claimed he was ecstatic at the news, but this was after Maguire decided he wanted joint custody of his child, leading to a messy court battle between him and Curtis.

When the HGTV star became pregnant again, she had a moment of profound déjà vu when the father of her child walked out on her … again. This was one of the reasons Nicole Curtis kept her pregnancy a secret on the set of HGTV’s “Rehab Addict.” “I was worried about being judged,” she told People. “It was a very difficult time for me. There I was, almost 40, having another child on my own.”

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In her memoir, Curtis touched on the private hardships she endured during her second pregnancy and all the ways she tried to strategically hide her baby bump from the cameras on “Rehab Addict.” The easiest way to hide her pregnancy was to only allow for the cameras to catch her from the chest up. Whenever she was in a wide shot, Curtis would make sure to carry something to hide her baby bump. “It wasn’t anything strategic, it was just one of those moments where I was like this isn’t anyone else’s time and space. This is mine,” she wrote.

Curtis also wanted to protect her baby from public scrutiny and social media. “Having my newborn child’s face plastered all over social media on a Facebook post where someone could cut and paste it and make it a meme, that wasn’t for me,” she shared in her book. With her first child, Curtis didn’t have the luxury of entirely hiding him from public view. She was a single mother who had to return to work after her son’s school day ended, and that meant taking him to work with her.

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While Shane Maguire reportedly wasn’t initially thrilled to become a father, he changed his mind after Nicole Curtis gave birth to their son, Harper, and he was confirmed to be the boy’s father. Maguire wanted joint custody and the ex-couple found themselves embroiled in a three-year-long custody battle. Initially, the court granted Maguire visitation rights. Harper was but six months old at the time and Curtis told People that having to be separated from her baby boy twice a week so he could go to his father’s was one of the hardest things she ever had to do. “Harper had never, ever been away from me before,” the TV host shared. “That was the most horrific moment. It was heart-wrenching.”

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Aside from the experience being heartbreaking for Curtis, she said that Harper was left with trauma of his own because of his parents’ situation. “He has attachment issues with all this hustling back and forth,” she admitted. “And whether it’s the mother or the father, when you take that person away for [a period of time], it does have a traumatic effect.”

The court proceedings got so messy at one point that Curtis was faced with possible jail time after she failed to comply with the visitation rights the court granted Maguire. Her ex claimed that he repeatedly drove to Michigan only to be told by Curtis that he could not see his son if she wasn’t present, leading to him not spending time with the boy at all. Curtis denied the allegations, but Maguire wanted to be reimbursed for his travel and legal expenses regarding the matter. Needless to say, when Curtis and Maguire finally reached a custody agreement in 2018, everyone was relieved.

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Nicole Curtis and her ex, Shane Maguire, didn’t have a smooth split, and while the two were locked in a custody battle for years, Curtis found herself having to defend breastfeeding her child to the court after Maguire asserted that she was only doing it so their child would be dependent on her and, therefore, unable to spend more time with him. Curtis denied this. “He had never had a bottle before, and then all of a sudden that was his only option while he was with his dad. I had no idea that a judge could say, ‘You’re court ordered to not feed your exclusively breastfed child,'” she told People. “It’s important that children have both of their parents. But [preventing] me from breastfeeding my child just so he can see the dad is not right.”

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Curtis also had to defend her decision to breastfeed her 30-month old son to the public, who have previously accused her of doing it for attention. Curtis was doing a livestream on Facebook, and at one point nursed her son without turning the camera off. While some have criticized her for still breastfeeding her child, others said her loud advocacy for breastfeeding was shaming moms who had no choice but to bottle feed their children. Some disgruntled fans also commented that they were tired of constantly having to read about breastfeeding on Curtis’ social media pages when they were actually following her because of her HGTV show. “I’m talking about it because it needs to be talked about,” Curtis told Country Living in response. “I’m using my voice to say, hey, I didn’t know this either.”

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Just as Nicole Curtis and her ex, Shane Maguire, were making headway in their custody battle, news broke that Curtis’ ex-boyfriend and the father of her first child, Steven Cimini, was in hot water with authorities for having failed to pay years’ worth of child support.

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Things heated up when Cimini, who owed Curtis a whopping $14,685.54 in child support, failed to show up to a court hearing, leading to a subsequent warrant for his arrest. This was just another legal issue Curtis had to deal with, but according to People, the HGTV host had allegedly forgiven Cimini his debt — even though the court hadn’t. It’s not clear whether Cimini was ever arrested. Media chatter died down almost as soon as it started as the press focused on other aspects of Curtis’ life.

Nicole Curtis’ youngest son, Harper, had barely turned a year old when Curtis’ grandmother died. The HGTV star was already suffering from some burnout during her bereavement, having not taken any maternity leave. “We had contracts to get through,” she told Country Living. “I went from giving birth to filming and building.” Her grandmother, Curtis recalled, was as headstrong as they came. “My Gram was Catholic and very proper, but she cursed. She’d look at me and say, this is f****** bulls***,” she recalled, adding how her grandmother was determined to celebrate her 70th wedding anniversary. She was hospitalized at one point but held on to celebrate the milestone, dying two days later. Curtis shared the news on Facebook, writing, “My Gram passed away. There’s nothing that will numb this. I will never match her accomplishments, her grace, her heart.”

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Curtis grew up living next to her grandparents, and they were a constant, steady force in her life. Curtis stepped up to take care of her grandfather after his wife died, and he taught her a valuable lesson before his own death. “He said to me one day, he said, ‘Nicky, you know what? As soon as you make enough to where you don’t need that money, don’t chase it anymore. You don’t need it. Why are you chasing it?” Curtis told Fox News in 2024. “That’s been a huge lesson learned for me.”

The year 2020 was filled with challenges for everyone, and Nicole Curtis was no exception. Smack in the middle of the pandemic, her beloved dog, Lucy, died. Curtis took to Instagram to share the heartbreaking news. “My dog, Lucy, is gone. The tears haven’t stopped, the heartache so bad that I’ve sat in my house just screaming her name out,” Curtis started the lengthy post. She didn’t share exactly how Lucy died, only that her neighbor had brought her over. Lucy had been Curtis’ companion for eight years, and she recalled how protective she was of her when she was pregnant with her youngest son. “She spent 9 [months] curled against my pregnant belly, she then guarded my baby like he was her own,” Curtis wrote. She added that she had no idea how to tell her young son that Lucy was gone and that she wasn’t planning on sharing the harsh truth with him just yet. “I have to go home and be the strong mommy & put on a smile,” she wrote.

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Curtis adopted Lucy while attending a charity auction for Secondhand Hounds. She coincidentally ended up holding Lucy, who was only six months old, but had no plans to adopt her. Only, Lucy managed to steal her heart in seconds. “I sat with her for about an hour,” Curtis told Dogster (via People). “I kept telling myself, ‘I’m not getting another dog. I don’t need another dog, I don’t want another dog.’ And then after an hour of sitting with her, I was like, this is my new dog.”

Something avid fans might not know about Nicole Curtis is that she’s been embroiled in more than one legal battle. Aside from the widely publicized custody battle with her ex, Curtis also found herself fighting to keep an old Detroit house built in 1908, which she acquired in 2017. Only, the City of Detroit Land Bank (DLBA) claimed the property belonged to the city of Detroit, not Curtis. They filed a lawsuit against the HGTV star, and she filed one of her own.

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The case took three years to resolve, and fortunately, Curtis emerged the victor, but the court battle nearly got the best of her. Thanks to her lawyer’s encouragement, however, Curtis decided not to give up, and shared the happy news on Instagram after the court ruled in her favor. “Simply stated, right is right and @buildingdet [DLBA] wrong is so wrong,” Curtis wrote. “Thank you for all your support & anyone else out there with a case — contact us. This is just the beginning.”

Nicole Curtis might have adored her grandparents, but she has a rocky relationship with her parents. She touched on this part of her life during an interview with Country Living, explaining that they are completely estranged. “Our situation is absolutely horrifying and heartbreaking. I can’t say any more to that,” she told the outlet.

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Curtis’ mother made headlines when she took to the court to request a personal protection order, claiming her daughter was threatening and harassing her. Her case was dismissed by the judge, who made it clear that it isn’t the court’s job to mend family relationships. “I’m deeply embarrassed about our family,” Curtis told the court during the proceedings (via Detroit Metro Times). Curtis and her mother both agreed to cut off contact with each other entirely. Meanwhile, Curtis’ father, instead of being protective of his daughter, has reportedly threatened to rat out her darkest secrets to the media.