Abby and Matt Howard Courtesy of Abby Howard/Instagram
TikTokers Matt and Abby Howard have reflected on the backlash they received after declaring they were boycotting Father’s Day last year.
During the 100th episode of the couple’s “Unplanned Podcast,” released on Wednesday, January 8, the couple discussed a viral clip from an infamous May 2024 episode of the podcast in which Matt, 26, claimed he would not celebrate Father’s Day until December that year because their 2023 June celebration was “a bummer.” (The married couple share two sons, Griffin, 2, and August, 1.)
Abby, 25, kicked off the couple’s revisit to the clip, which attracted more than 9.4 million views and an avalanche of criticism. “Matt’s Father’s Day birthday saga. That was a memorable moment from [the] Unplanned podcast 2024. How would you rate that moment … one out of 10? You have to include the emotional trauma,” Abby asked Matt in the new episode.
Matt responded, “Oh my gosh, I can laugh about it now [but] at the time I was, like, horrified. I think it’s funny now, I’m like, that is so stupid. The words I said … were so stupid as well, I obviously did not sound good at all.”
He continued, “I just looked so selfish. I looked so full of myself.”
Despite Matt’s obvious remorse, Abby said she believed it’s “kind of funny in hindsight,” before adding that she didn’t actually view the controversial clip and, as a result, didn’t know how Matt came across at the time.
“In general, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with … controversy, but I didn’t watch the clip and maybe the clip made it look really bad,” Abby admitted. “In which case, that’s on us. I guess we had that one coming.”
At the time, Abby, who was pregnant with the couple’s second child, revealed how she had combined her husband’s birthday with Father’s Day in 2023 because the two events fell on the same day. The pair had also just returned from a babymoon and Matt had acknowledged that the family were very busy at the time.
Both Abby and Matt agreed they would be “boycotting Father’s Day in the month of June,” as a result of the previous year’s turnout, deciding to celebrate the occasion in September as “nothing goes on in September.”
The high school sweethearts have become somewhat familiar with controversy over the years, attracting criticism again in September 2024 when they revealed they went for dinner with friends while their children slept in the family’s bedroom. “So we ended up taking them for five nights and it became apparent that they weren’t enjoying it and therefore we weren’t either,” Abby wrote in an Instagram Story at the time. “So, THEN we switched our dinner time to AFTER their bedtime and FaceTIMED the monitors while we ate. And that worked out muchhhh better for everyone!”
The post was met with widespread disapproval, despite a source telling Us Weekly that the families on the cruise had “rooms right next door to each other and they were taking turns being there,” adding that the kids, “were never alone and the use of the baby monitors was an extra precaution.”
Abby and Matt got married in July 2019 before welcoming their sons. Since becoming parents, the podcast hosts have shared their relationship and parenting highs and lows via their podcast as well as social media.
