An empire isn’t built in a day! Jonathan and Drew Scott are best known for their mega-successful HGTV series Property Brothers, but they weren’t always on top of the world.
“Our whole lives we’ve been dividing and conquering,” Jonathan exclusively shares in the latest issue of Us Weekly.
After graduating high school in 1996, the twins, now 39, bought a home in Calgary, Canada, on a whim with a down payment of just $250. Within a year, they turned the eyesore into a $50,000 profit. “We realized there was something we could do here,” Drew tells Us. “So we kept flipping houses.”
Still, their current success did not come without hardships. Years ago, Jonathan dreamed of becoming a magician. “I wanted to be the next David Copperfield,” he says.
However, Jonathan was fooled at age 20 by an escape artist looking to buy props. Against his better judgement, he handed over $80,000 worth of handcrafted props to his fellow striver. He never saw a dime and was forced to declare bankruptcy soon after. “It wiped me out. I was devastated,” he recalls to Us.
Drew faced a crushing blow, too. As a struggling actor in Vancouver, he built up credit card debt and essentially wiped out his savings. Accepting defeat, the current Dancing With the Stars contestant packed his bags and joined his brother in Alberta.
Heartbreak came next. Jonathan’s marriage to airline crew scheduler Kelsy ended in divorce after just two years. Since then, the twins have both found true love. Drew proposed to Linda Phan, the creative director of the Scott Brothers Entertainment company, in December after six years of dating. “She has a great personality and smile, but it’s the little things she does,” he gushes to Us. “She leaves me notes and packs me an extra snack if she knows I’m going to have a long day.”
Meanwhile, Jonathan is dating Jacinta Kuznetsov, who he met in 2015. “We have the same sick sense of humor,” he tells Us of his girlfriend. “We are both independent and pursue our own passions, but support each other. I think that’s important to do.”
For more on the Scott brothers, including whether fatherhood is in their cards, pick up the latest issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands now! Their new memoir, It Takes Two: Our Story, is out now.
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