Each of the Chrisley children has a teddy bear with their mother Julie Chrisley’s voice on it.
Savannah Chrisley, 27, who has custody of her younger brother Grayson, 18, and younger sister Chloe, 11, said on her “Unlocked” podcast Tuesday that her mom recorded the prayer on the Build-A-Bear that Chloe originally gave her before she went to prison in January 2023 because she and Chloe would always pray together every night.
“And then Grayson burst into tears and said, ‘But I want one, too,'” Savannah said. “And Build-a-Bear closed in 30 minutes, so she ran to Build-a-Bear and made him two, made me one, made Chase one, and we all still have them.”
Savannah said she still plays the bear recording, but “kids don’t. Chloe, someone played it for her the other day and she was horrified and said, ‘Don’t play it! Don’t play it!’ because she didn’t listen to it at all.”
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Savannah Chrisley (right) said her mother, Julie (center), gave her children Build-A-Bears with personal messages before she went to prison. (Getty Images)
Chloe is Savannah’s niece, but Todd and Julie adopted her because of her older brother Kyle’s drug abuse and legal troubles.
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“From an outsider’s perspective, I can’t even imagine what it’s like to receive a song like that, but seeing and hearing you guys play it for the first time was really heartbreaking,” Savannah’s friend Tyler Bishop said on the podcast.
Julie and Todd Chrisley, known for their reality show “Chrisley Knows Best,” were sentenced to a total of 19 years in prison in November 2022 for fraud and tax evasion.
Todd was originally sentenced to prison. Sentenced to 12 years, but had her sentence reduced by two years. Julie was initially sentenced to seven years in prison in August 2019 after being charged with bank fraud and tax evasion. Her sentence was reduced to 14 months in September 2023.
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In June, her sentence was vacated by an appeals court solely on the basis of legal errors in the way the trial judge calculated her sentence. She will be tried later this month.
Erin Duggan, a friend and podcast producer, remembered going out to lunch with Savannah after her parents turned themselves in to federal prison.
Savannah Chrisley has custody of her younger brother Grayson and younger sister Chloe while her parents are in prison. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
“It was like the weight of the world was on your shoulders, and we went to lunch, and we had two glasses of wine, and it was like I had already accepted, I’m not going to go back and do this, and this lunch is going to be as long as it needs to be. It was a long lunch, and we came back here, and you just completely melted down,” Dugan said. “But you — most people are in that situation that you were in, and they can’t handle it like you did, and they break down even more. I was glad that you were comfortable crying. Just crying.”
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“Erin was like, ‘Cry, cry, get it out!’ and I was like, ‘Trust me, I’ve been through this,'” Savannah said, laughing.
Savannah Chrisley with her parents in 2015 (Rick Diamond/Getty Images for Concert For Love And Acceptance)
“I think it’s a build-up of energy to the point where you have nowhere to let it out. So I think when it gets to that point, I look at it as a positive because I think I need to let it out,” she said.
Holly Waldrup, a friend of Savannah’s, added that there was “so much denial” that Julie and Todd would go to prison after they were sentenced.
“No one accepted the fact that they were leaving until they got there,” she said.
Julie Chrisley gave each child a teddy bear as a gift. (Tommy Garcia/USA Network/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
Savannah added that she has since talked to her mother about the “impossible situation” and that she wishes Julie had done more to prepare before turning herself in to jail, “because they didn’t prepare anything for the kids to go, like pack them up, move them, pack their stuff.”
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She said she took care of everything herself after her parents went to prison, along with her ex-fiancé Nick Cuddylis, who died in a motorcycle accident later that year.
