Eight months after Travis Clark admitted to cheating on wife Katie Bates, the Bringing Up Bates alum responded to a fan on Instagram asking if she's pregnant: "Lots of these lately."
The Bringing Up Bates alum—whose husband Travis Clark admitted to cheating on her earlier this year—set the record straight on pregnancy rumors during an Instagram Story Q&A on Sept. 5.
"Lots of these lately," Katie, referencing pregnancy questions, wrote, "and no, I'm not pregnant."
The 25-year-old, mom to Hailey, 3, and Harvey, 23 months, with Travis, went on to note that they're "just soaking in the two sweet babies we have."
While Katie and Travis, also 25, aren't expanding their family right now, their squad has been enjoying a new chapter after a difficult start to the year, even moving to a new home.
"Life has looked different lately, but I’m really excited for what’s ahead,” she wrote on Instagram in May. “The last few months have honestly been a lot heavier and more life changing than I ever expected them to be. There’s been a lot of hard conversations, a lot of therapy, a lot of praying, and a lot of figuring out what is healthiest for our family moving forward.”
"I know from the outside this move might not fully make sense to everyone," Katie, the daughter of Gil Bates and Kelly Jo Bates, continued, "but it’s something we’ve spent a lot of time praying through and processing together. It’s not about running or pretending a new place magically fixes everything… life doesn’t work like that. More than anything, we’ve been trying to make decisions that support healing, peace, spiritual growth, and a healthy environment for our family."
Katie's message came four months after Travis, whom she married in 2021, admitted to cheating on her.
“This is hard to write, but I owe the truth and I owe an apology,” he wrote in a message on Instagram Stories Jan. 17. “I was unfaithful to my wife. I had an affair and repeatedly broke her trust. There is no excuse for what I did. This was my failure and my responsibility alone.”
His public confession was posted one day after Katie shared that they'd experienced a pregnancy loss.
“I know that words don't begin to express the damage I caused or the depth of the hurt I've brought into her life, but I am truly sorry,” Travis added. “I'm sorry for the pain, humiliation, and betrayal I caused my wife through my choices. I understand that an apology doesn't repair what I broke, and forgiveness is not something I deserve or can ask for.”
As Katie and Travis continue to explore this new era, keep reading for a deep dive into the Bates family tree.
South Carolina state wrestling champ William Gilvin “Gil” Bates met lab assistant Kelly Bates (née Callaham) at South Carolina Christian liberal arts school Anderson University, when she was tasked with tutoring him in Chemistry. Proving they had plenty of it, he proposed in October 1987, while they were finishing up college at Tennessee’s Carson-Newman University. Marrying just two months later, the couple didn’t intend on having a large brood, but neither believed in birth control. “We both came to the conclusion that we just wanted to trust God with how many children we had,” Gil told Dateline in 2011, admitting they assumed they’d cap out at two or three.
Eldest son Zachary Bates was born a year after their wedding; their 19th child—son Jeb Bates—arrived in 2012. As for rattling off the names of their oversized brood, Kelly joked of Gil, who runs excavating company Bates Tree Service, "Oh, Daddy's good at that. His memory's better than mine."
Like his siblings, Zachary (born Dec. 30, 1988) was homeschooled and a dedicated student of Bill Gothard's Institute in Basic Life Principles. Though his courtship with Sarah Reith was captured on 19 Kids and Counting it was future wife Whitney Perkins who captured his heart while working as a Sonic carhop. He proposed two months after the two started a courtship in 2013, marrying that December. (John-David Duggar served as one of the groomsmen. The couple went on to welcome sons Bradley (in October 2014) and Jayden (in June 2021) and daughters Kaci (in June 2016), Khloé (in November 2019) and Lily Jo (in August 2023). In September 2025, they revealed they'll welcome their sixth in 2026.
