As Corey Sevier‘s newest Hallmark Channel rom-com premieres on September 26, 2026, it will mark the fifth time he’s starred in a movie written by his wife, Kate Pragnell.
The award-winning screenwriter penned the script for “Pumpkin Regatta Romance,” starring Sevier and Mishael Morgan, one of many rom-coms Pragnell has written since 2012. Sevier and Pragnell have become quite the team in the world of TV rom-coms, though he sweetly told TV Fanatic in 2023 that she’s “the brains behind the operation.”
Corey Sevier Says He & Wife Kate Pragnell Are ‘Very Supportive of Each Other’
HallmarkPragnell graduated from Vancouver Film School, but also earned her BScH degree in Environmental Biology from Queen’s University, per IMDb. Before becoming a screenwriter, she worked in 2013 as a personal assistant to Andie MacDowell on the set of Hallmark’s first series, “Cedar Cove.” Sevier was playing Seth Gunderson on the show at that time.
A decade later, in 2023, Sevier told Pop Culturist, “We’ve been together for 10 years, collaborating and doing this together. We’re very supportive of each other on both sides… Life in the arts has its ups and downs. Life always throws you unexpected things. But if you’re fortunate enough to have that love, support, and trust with the people around you, it does give you the courage to take risks and to take chances.”
In 2016, Sevier starred in and directed Pragnell’s first major screenplay — a 20-minute short film called “Haley,” about a man who survives an alien invasion that “leaves the world in chaos.” The Canadian film, which follows Sevier’s character as he “treks across the dying planet in a final act of humanity,” was nominated for 10 Leo Awards and was named the 2018 Best of Fest winner at the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival.
Sevier, who previously starred with fellow Hallmark stars Kristoffer Polaha and Nikki DeLoach in the series “North Shore,” was already making a name for himself in the rom-com world by the time “Hayley” came out, including co-starring with Lacey Chabert in the 2013 upTV movie “The Tree That Saved Christmas.” In 2018, he landed his first Hallmark movie, with a supporting role in Taylor Cole‘s “The Art of Us” and the next year, he starred with Ashley Williams in “Northern Lights of Christmas.”
The first rom-com Pragnell and Sevier worked on together was Hallmark’s “Heart of the Holidays” in 2020, starring Sevier and Vanessa Lengies. The next year, she wrote Lifetime’s “It Takes a Christmas Village,” co-starring Sevier and Brooke Nevin.
In 2023, when Sevier and Lengies teamed up again for Hallmark’s “Take Me Back For Christmas,” with him starring and directing, he told TV Fanatic that Pragnell wrote the screenplay after they’d watched “The Family Man” starring Nicolas Cage and Tea Leoni.
Sevier recalled, “My wife and I were literally sitting down on the couch watching it one night, and I turned to her, and I said, ‘You know what? What if we made a Christmas movie like that?’ And so we started developing it. Next thing you know, here we are a year later, and the movie’s about to air.”
Corey Sevier & Kate Pragnell Are Busy Parents When They’re Not Working on Movies
“Take Me Back for Christmas” earned Pragnell a 2024 Canadian Screen Awards nomination for Best Writing in a TV Movie. Though she rarely makes public appearances with her husband, they attended the awards show together (spotted in the fourth photo above). He told TV Fanatic, “I’m very proud of Kate. I’m biased, but she’s such a talented writer.”
After that, Sevier co-starred with Rachel Skarsten in Pragnell’s 2024 movie “The Christmas Charade,” marking the fourth Hallmark movie the couple had worked on together. With “Pumpkin Regatta Romance” as their fifth Hallmark collaboration, Sevier told True Hollywood Talk that his wife put him in a situation he’d never been in before.
“We were literally in pumpkins on the water… these pumpkin regattas are a real thing,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. My wife wrote the script, so when she was doing research, I couldn’t believe that people actually do this. When we did it, we had safety people help us. It’s not as easy as it looks. It was a lot of fun.”
When Sevier and Pragnell aren’t working on movies, they maintain a very private life in Toronto with their children; neither is active on social media, though Sevier typically posts his latest movie via his X account. The couple welcomed son Lucas in 2019, and he told TV Fanatic in 2023 that Pragnell was expecting their second.
Ahead of the “Pumpkin Regatta Romance” premiere, he told True Hollywood Talk, “With young kids, you’ve got to go with the flow and enjoy. It is important to enjoy every moment.”
“If you do something you love,” he continued, “and have quality time with family and your community, and people you care about, then there is nothing better than that. I feel very fortunate to be doing what I love to do.”
“Pumpkin Regatta Romance” premieres on September 26 at 8 p.m. Eastern, and will be available to stream via Hallmark+ the next day.
