Celebrity Celebrity Relationships Celebrity Dating Chilli and Matthew Lawrence Share a Passionate New Year's Kiss in New Photo The pair began dating just before Thanksgiving in 2022 By Ilana Kaplan Ilana Kaplan Ilana Kaplan is a Staff Editor at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2023. Her work has previously appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Vogue and more. People Editorial Guidelines Published on January 2, 2024 05:05PM EST Close Matthew Lawrence and Chilli. Photo: The Real Chilli/Instagram Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas and Matthew Lawrence rang in the new year with some PDA! On Monday, Chilli, 52, shared a photo to Instagram of she and boyfriend Lawrence, 43, sharing a passionate kiss in nature. In the photo, the Boy Meets World star is seen sporting an Adidas baseball cap and a Calvin Klein puffer vest while his beau appears to be wearing a gray pullover. "HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!" the TLC musician captioned the image. Lawrence and Chilli became involved romantically just prior to Thanksgiving 2022 after they were previously photographed on a beach in Hawaii that August. In January 2023, the R&B artist's longtime rep Christal Jordan confirmed she was dating Lawrence in a statement to PEOPLE, saying, "I've been with Chilli since 2005 and I've never seen her this in love." "She is glowing. They are really cute together," Jordan added at the time, further confirming that the couple spent Thanksgiving and Christmas 2022 in Atlanta, where the actor met Chilli's family. Matthew Lawrence Reveals How He Met 'Amazing Woman' Chilli: 'She's Really, Really Special' But he and Chilli revealed that their romance might not have occurred had it not been for a big snowstorm that reunited them on the same flight. "Really it was the flight talking and then afterward saying, 'Hey, you know what? Let's keep in contact,' and it almost did not happen," Lawrence said of the flight he met Chilli on. "Literally an hour before the flight took off, they said, 'OK, we got you on this flight. You gotta go,'" he told ET last March about making the trip for work. In May, Chilli opened up to PEOPLE about her romance with Lawrence ahead of the release ofLifetime's documentary TLC Forever. Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. Matthew Lawrence and Chilli. David Livingston/Getty Images; Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images Chilli and Matthew Lawrence Haven't Had an Argument Since They Began Dating Last Year (Exclusive) "I never thought the name ‘Matthew’ would make me blush so much," Chilli said with a laugh. Though she wasn't a big Boy Meets World fan, she’d seen him in other projects and "I always thought he was cute." The couple initially met in passing at '90s Con in 2022. Following his divorce from Dancing with the Stars’ Cheryl Burke, they began dating, and they've been inseparable ever since."To this day we have not had one argument," she said. "I'm like, 'Matthew, it's gonna happen one day, cause we're going to be together forever.'" Despite their long-distance relationship — with her in Atlanta and Lawrence in Los Angeles — "we know how to communicate very well with each other," she told PEOPLE. "And I didn't want a relationship that I had to work so hard in."