Home Sweet Home: Chip & Joanna Gaines

Chip & Joanna Gaines put family first while building a lifestyle empire in Texas.

By Sondra Barr

In small town Waco, Texas, Chip and Joanna Gaines are hometown royalty. Since the launch of their show Fixer Upper in 2013, the pair revitalized the once sedate town into a bustling, must-visit destination that millions of their devotees visit yearly for a chance to sample the gracious, bucolic lifestyle cultivated by the Gaines’s Magnolia brand.

There’s the 5-acre Magnolia Market shopping complex, the Magnolia Press coffee shop, the Silos Baking Co. Bakery, and Magnolia Table, add to this their lifestyle books, a magazine (Magnolia Journal), apparel, furniture, accessories, a real estate company, and most recently their very own cable channel, the Magnolia Network on Discovery, all proof of the pair’s influence in the worlds of design, food, home, and garden.

The photogenic couple’s affable nature and country approachability, combined with an eye for design, have contributed to their popularity. Yet, it’s their unwavering commitment to each other and their family that is the ultimate “secret” sauce to their appeal.

“We are who you think we are. We’re the couple you want to go have a coffee with, we’re the couple you want to have a 15-minute chat with on the way to the market,” said Chip to Hunter Hauk of Cowboys & Indians. “The reason that we’re those people is because we do the hard work that is required. We treat each other with respect. We admire one another’s strengths and weaknesses. We pull for each other. We learned that early.”

Although they both graduated from Baylor University, Chip with a marketing degree and Joanna with a degree in communications, his first glimpse of her was a photo of Joanna hanging on the wall of her father’s Firestone Tire store. “I knew I’d marry her one day just by the picture on the wall,” Chip told Popsugar.

Hoping to meet his future wife, Chip returned to the shop for fresh “repairs.” His doggedness proved fruitful when he finally ran into her. He landed a date by complimenting Joanna on the car commercials she starred in for her family’s tire shop.

“At first, I couldn’t believe how kind Chip was––he had kind eyes, and made me laugh a lot. I knew he was the one because I knew I could trust him,” Joanna said.

Contrary to their traditional Christian values, after only a year of dating, they moved into a rental property of Chip’s, an 800-square-foot home that they renovated. They married in 2003, the year they opened the original Magnolia Market on Bosque Blvd. After their wedding, they purchased their first official flip together. “All I could remember is the smell. The house was bad. Chip did all the construction, and I remember many nights he was on his hands and knees staining floors or laying tile,” she said.

“I remember when we first got married the only money we had was what was in Chip’s pocket,” Joanna told PEOPLE. “He always had a wad of cash, but we were broke. If I needed to go grocery shopping it’s whatever was in his pocket. That’s how we paid the bills.”

A Vietnam War vet, Joanna’s father wasn’t exactly pro Chip. “Her dad spent the first two years of our marriage asking me if I was going to get a job,” Chip said. “I was like, ‘I have a job and I like it.’”

When Magnolia Market closed in 2006 after the birth of two of their five children, the duo focused on their construction business, Magnolia Homes.

“One pretty amazing thing we learned early on was that the more time we spent together, the better our relationship was,” wrote Joanna on her blog. “We seem to give each other energy. We function better together than we do apart, and I don’t think either one of us has ever felt the urge to say, ‘I need a break from you.’ Don’t get me wrong, we’re certainly had our share of disappointments and arguments, but we just always wanted to tackle our issues together.”

After more than a decade of flipping houses, Joanna’s blog caught the attention of producer Katie Neff, who called the couple to learn more.

“I was just really impressed by the fact that they were so in love with the town and so dedicated to it––and so dedicated to making a more beautiful place to live in. It’s the perfect place to be flipping homes, because there were so many horribly decrepit homes that you couldn’t live in,” Neff told Texas Monthly.

HGTV recognized the duo’s dynamic chemistry and distinctive style was unique and signed them up, much to the surprise of Chip, who initially couldn’t believe it was legitimate interest. “He was like, ‘it’s a scam, do not call them back,’” Joanna told Today.

Launched in 2013, Fixer Upper became the most watched series in the history of HGTV. With years spent fixing and flipping houses, they hit the ground running and viewers were instantly hooked on the pair’s charming design aesthetic.

Early on, they established ground rules to ensure their brood, which has since grown to five, wouldn’t suffer due to filming. They insisted all the homes worked on during the show’s 79 episodes be in Waco so that they were rarely far from home or their other businesses.

Single-handedly responsible for turning farmhouse chic into a national obsession and for the meteoric rise of shiplap sales, the looks they achieved on the show were widely coveted and opened the door for other opportunities.

“We realized we didn’t necessarily love that side of the camera, and that part became a full-time job,” said Joanna to PEOPLE. “We’ve got a big family. We’ve got a business. The show ended up where we had to constantly be feeding it.”

When Chip and Joanna walked away from the show in 2018, fans were shocked. Yet, the pair, always ahead of the trend, had bigger plans. Their biggest remodel to date turned out to be the transformation of HGTV’s sister channel, DIY Network, into their own personal cable realm devoted exclusively to Chip and Joanna curated content. Named (what else) Magnolia Network, it debuted on cable this year with over a dozen original shows handpicked by the duo and the tagline “TV that feels like home.” Not surprising, considering Magnolia Network is a coming home of sorts for Chip and Joanna.

“What we’re hoping to do is to light a fire so that you can go out and create the life that you were meant to live. And that’s really, really the bottom line for us,” explained Chip to Variety about the venture.

“We just believe in the power of getting around the television as a family watching the same show together. I think right now a lot of people are on their own devices watching their own shows,” said Joanna. “It kind of reminds me of six years ago when we said yes to [creating Magnolia Journal quarterly] magazine. That was something we were dreaming about. Everyone was saying it’s all going digital, print is dying. We believe in the idea of sitting in your favorite chair with your magazine for an hour doing that kind of back-to-basics thing. And I think the same goes with television. It’s weird to think of it as nostalgic, but being around the television set feels like back to the basics all over again.”