Danielle Fishel was 12 when Jonathan Taylor Thomas became her first boyfriend, and she laid out exactly how two kid actors ended up together: their stages sat next to each other.
On the October 22, 2026 episode of the Throwbacks podcast, the Boy Meets World star said her show taped right beside Home Improvement, where Thomas was already playing Randy, and the two spent their days as neighbors on the lot.
“We used to have PE together every single day,” she said, describing him as “so sweet” with “a little raspy voice.”
She first shared the detail back in 2022, telling the Pod Meets World crowd, “yes, Jonathan was my first boyfriend when I was like 12.” She later called him “my first real-life Danielle crush” and said she “worked next door to him.”
By her own account the two were “really off and on regularly over the years,” and she has said Thomas was “a staple in our house” and “at our house all the time.” Her mother, Jennifer Fishel, said she “adored” him once they met, after being “still uneasy about it” at first.
Fishel, born May 5, 1981, played Topanga Lawrence on Boy Meets World from 1993 to 2000. Thomas, born about four months later, was a Home Improvement regular by the time her show premiered in September 1993.
Thomas has never publicly spoken about a relationship with her, and when discussing a February 1996 diary entry she clarified, “Jonathan and I were not necessarily dating at this time.”