Stephen Baldwin is proud of how his daughter, Hailey Bieber, has stuck by husband Justin Bieber‘s side through thick and thin.
“I am just glad he connected with a great gal to help him survive,” Baldwin, 58, recently told the Daily Mail. “Their happiness and their wellbeing and their health is more obviously now better than ever.”
Baldwin also recalled the advice he offered Hailey, 27, and Justin, 30, before their marriage, adding, “Look, early on meeting Justin, getting to know him, I hung out with him a bit before I said he could marry my daughter. But one of the simple things I told them was, ‘You decide your normal. You and Hailey will decide your normal.’”
The couple were originally linked from 2015 to 2016. After their split, Justin briefly rekindled his on-off romance with Selena Gomez, but the twosome called it quits for good in 2018. Later that year, Justin and Hailey rekindled their relationship and got engaged. They exchanged vows in a New York City courthouse in September 2018 before hosting a second wedding ceremony one year later.
“I remember I called [my mom] a few different times, one particular time [when] we were in Brooklyn and I was calling her, crying, and I was like, ‘I just can’t do it. There’s no way that I’m going to be able to do this if it’s going to be like this forever,’” she explained during an episode of the “In Good Faith with Chelsea & Judah Smith” podcast in November 2021. “And I just remember she was so calm on the phone and she was like, ‘It’s going to pass, you’re going to be fine and he’s going to be healthy and we’re here for you.’”
Hailey added: “But I also just think I was in it. I made a decision. I know for a fact that I’ve loved this person for a very long time and now would not be the time to give up on him. I just wouldn’t do that to him.”
According to Hailey, those obstacles convinced her to stand by her husband. “Imagine abandoning somebody in the middle of the worst time of their life, potentially. I’m not that type of a person,” she continued. “So I was going to stick it out no matter what the outcome was going to be. It was really hard. There were days where I literally was like, ‘I don’t know if he’s going to be OK.’ Something really deep down inside of me was like, ‘He’s going to be through it.’ I just didn’t know how long it was going to take.”
Justin, meanwhile, opened up about learning his own relationship lessons early on in their marriage.
“It’s a journey. I remember when I first got married, I hit a little bit of an emotional breakdown because I thought marriage was going to fix all my problems and it didn’t,” he told Apple Music’s Ebro Darden in May 2022. “It just kind of was a reflection of like, ‘Man, you’re a bit of a hypocrite, man.’”
Hailey and Justin have since expanded their family with son Jack, whom they welcomed in August.
“They’re just spending really sweet, private quality time with Jack and we’re just getting ready to watch him come out on the world here, come out on the scene,” Baldwin told the Daily Mail. “They know what they’re doing. And baby Jack is here. We are excited.”
Baldwin’s insight on Justin and Hailey comes after she admitted she wasn’t as close to her relatives, telling W magazine in July, “I’m not super close with my family at this point in my life because I feel like I’m very independent. I’m my own individual now, and I’ve built my own family. But when I look back on my childhood and how I grew up, I have very fond, beautiful memories.”