After living in Los Angeles most of her life, longtime Hallmark Channel star and “Days of Our Lives” alum Alison Sweeney was ready to try something new. After her husband, Dave Sanov, retired from the California Highway Patrol in October 2022, they moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, with their kids — Ben, now 20, and Megan, 16.
When Fox News Digital asked Sweeney whether she misses Hollywood in an interview published on July 20, 2025, the “Hannah Swensen Mysteries” star replied, “I mean, no. I miss my family. I love my family. I go to visit them all the time, but they’re not really in Hollywood or whatever. So, no. I am thrilled with my life. I love how normal it is.”
Sweeney is one of multiple Hallmark stars who’ve moved their families out of Hollywood in recent years for various reasons, while others remain firmly rooted in the L.A. area. So, who’s moved out and who’s still there?
Which Hallmark Channel Stars Have Left Los Angeles?
Hallmark Channel projects are rarely filmed in Los Angeles, so living there isn’t necessary for its core group of stars. A large number of its movies and shows, like “When Calls The Heart,” are still filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia.
However, the network now films a fair number of “destination” movies overseas — including Sweeney’s 2025 “To Barcelona” movies with Ashley Williams, filmed in Spain. In the first half of 2025, Hallmark has also filmed new projects in multiple cities across the U.S., from Buffalo, New York (for “Holiday Touchdown: A Buffalo Bills Romance” and “A Newport Christmas”) to Salt Lake City (for “Haul Out the Halloween” and “Finding Mr. Christmas”).
Given that stars don’t need to be in L.A. for filming, some have chosen to move away like Sweeney.
“Chesapeake Shores” alum Meghan Ory and John Reardon, who starred together in 2024’s “Believe in Christmas,” lived in L.A. for 20 years before moving home to Canada, where they were both born and raised. The couple now lives with their three kids in Newfoundland, in a 120-year-old house they’re renovating while chronicling their adventures on YouTube.
Michael Rady, who stars in August’s “Catch of the Day,” and his wife Rachael Kemery lived in L.A. for nearly 17 years before returning to the East Coast, where they’re both from.
“As our kids were getting closer to school age, I don’t know, we were craving a change,” he told EntertainmentNow in November. “We were missing just the feeling of home that we both grew up with on the East Coast. We wanted better schooling options, we were wanting to buy a house, we were wanting to be closer to our families on the East Coast. And we were really wanting a deeper, more consistent immersion in nature. We wanted to be in nature a lot, surrounded by nature like we grew up.”
The couple settled on moving to Connecticut, which Rady said they fall deeper in love with every year. Ironically, the weekend they moved to their fixer-upper, he started filming a Hallmark movie in Connecticut — 2018’s “Christmas at Pemberley Manor” — and told EntertainmentNow, “I’d come home at night time, and on the weekends, I’d smash out some walls. It was wonderfully convenient.”
Rady isn’t the only Hallmark star in Connecticut. Wes Brown and his family — wife Amanda and daughter Merribeth — also left L.A. for a quieter life in the town of Westport, where he told Collider he keeps the Christmas lights a subdued white instead of the “flashy” display he had at his L.A. home.
Longtime Hallmark star Tamera Mowry-Housley, who spent her childhood in Hollywood on the hit sitcom “Sister, Sister,” now lives in Northern California’s Napa Valley. When she’s not busy filming, she helps her husband, Adam Housley, and his family with their vineyard and related businesses.
Which Hallmark Channel Stars Still Live in Los Angeles?
Plenty of other Hallmark stars still call the Los Angeles area home, including Lacey Chabert, whose unscripted series “Celebrations With Lacey Chabert” is filmed there. But Chabert is used to traveling for work while her husband, David Nehdar, and daughter Julia stay home. Chabert’s “Haul Out the Holly” franchise films in Salt Lake City, Utah, and she’s spent part of July in Vancouver filming her just-announced Christmas movie with Andrew Walker.
Walker, meanwhile, has called L.A. home since his early 20s. But the native Canadian has spent much of the last year renting a home in Vancouver, to give his family — wife Cassandra Troy and their young sons West and Wolf — more time in nature and near family and friends there, he told EntertainmentNow.
Hallmark heartthrob Tyler Hynes, also a native Canadian, splits his time between there and L.A, per Los Angeles Magazine, frequently sharing glimpses on Instagram of his life in both locations. Erin Cahill and her husband, musician Paul Freeman, divide their time between L.A. and Nashville, she told EntertainmentNow in 2024.
Other Hallmark stars who call the L.A. area home include Ashley Williams, Nikki DeLoach, Brennan Elliott, John Brotherton, Jodie Sweetin, Kristoffer Polaha, Jack Wagner, and newly-married Erin Krakow and Ben Rosenbaum (when they’re not filming “When Calls The Heart” in Vancouver).
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Hallmark Channel Stars Who’ve Left Hollywood: Actress Says She’s ‘Thrilled With My Life’ Now