Katie Irene "Kate" Gosselin (born Kreider) is an American television personality. She achieved national and international recognition on the US reality TV show Jon & Kate Plus 8, in which she and Jon Gosselin are profiled as they raise their atypical family of sextuplets and twins. Kate Kreider was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is the second of five children (Kendra, Christen, Clairissa and Kevin) of Charlene (née Kolak) and Kenton Eugene Kreider. Her father is a pastor. Kreider met Jon Gosselin at a company picnic on October 5, 1997. They were married on June 12, 1999. On October 8, 2000, she gave birth to twin girls (Cara and Madelyn) who were at 35 weeks gestation five weeks premature. Gosselin became pregnant through fertility treatment because polycystic ovary syndrome left her unable to conceive otherwise. After further treatments, Gosselin became pregnant again and she gave birth to sextuplets (sons, Aaden, Collin, and Joel, and daughters, Leah, Alexis, and Hannah) on May 10, 2004, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center. She gave birth at just shy of 30 weeks gestation. The sextuplets were born 10 weeks premature, which is common in the multiple births that result from fertility treatments. The early birth required that the six infants be placed on ventilators. According to her newest book, Kate revealed that very early in the pregnancy there were seven embryos, but one did not develop.
Gosselin became a registered nurse after completing a diploma program at the Reading Hospital and Medical Center in Reading, Pennsylvania. She then worked as a labor and delivery nurse at Reading Hospital until 2004. Following the birth of the sextuplets, the Gosselins were featured in the NBC reality TV show Home Delivery when their home in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, was renovated to accommodate the large family. The family was then featured in a special on Discovery Health in September 2005 entitled Surviving Sextuplets and Twins. A year later they were featured in another special entitled Sextuplets and Twins: One Year Later. With high ratings from the specials, Discovery Health signed the couple to a reality series that aired beginning in April 2007, called Jon & Kate Plus 8, which documented their lives. To produce the show, the family was filmed for three or four days per week. The show's first two seasons aired on Discovery Health Channel and then moved to The Learning Channel (TLC). The family received payment for appearing on the show.
On June 22, 2009, an extended one-hour episode was aired. The Gosselins announced that they were separating. The two had met with Pennsylvania attorneys on the day that the episode aired to finalize plans for divorce rather than separation. They stated that their eight children will remain in their Pennsylvania home, and the two of them will move back and forth to accommodate the custody agreement. On December 16, 2009, it was announced that the couple's divorce was finalized.[11] Kate had been granted the ownership of the family home and primary custody of the children. In separate interviews, they stated that the show would continue; however, TLC announced on June 23, 2009, that the show would be placed on hiatus effective immediately. According to TLC, Jon and Kate had moved the focus away from the family and the change in the dynamic, as well as the production difficulties that had occurred because the couple was no longer living together, made it unclear whether the show was still viable.
On September 29, 2009, TLC announced the title of the show would be changed from Jon & Kate Plus 8 to Kate Plus 8 and would follow Gosselin as a single mother. Jon would continue to appear, albeit infrequently, on the show. The last episode was a season five finale on November 23, 2009, because of Jon's decision to stop filming.
