Celebrity Couples
Joanna Gaines Reminisces About First Date With Chip & Reveals How She ’Shocked’ Him
More than two decades ago, Joanna Gaines and Chip Gaines went on their very first date, and she opened up about the special evening in a new interview.
While discussing the couple’s love of food, Joanna revealed how she unexpectedly shocked her now-husband when they went out to dinner for the first time in 2001.
“Our first date, we went to this little place that served homestyle meals on the front porch,” she recalled in an interview with Delish. “It was, like, fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes, and gravy. And Chip was so shocked that I ate more than he did. I was like, ‘If I’m gonna scare the guy away, I might as well scare him away on the first date.’ Chip was like, ‘Wow, this girl really loves food.’”
Clearly, she didn’t scare him away, because the two went on to tie the knot in 2003. They now share five children together.
Chip and Joanna met when he was a customer at her father’s auto shop in Texas. Although she had eyes for his roommate at first, she accepted when Chip asked her out. However, when he was more than an hour late picking her up for that first date, things almost went south.
“He didn’t apologize for being late, either,” she previously wrote in a blog post. “He had so much confidence. I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Only Chip could be an hour and a half late and have no one mad about it.” It wasn’t until a few months later that they went on a second date, and the rest is history.
All these years later, Joanna said that food is still the thing that brings her and Chip “together just for the two of us,” adding, “We love date night. We got to lunch a ton. Chip is a sharer. I’ll say, ‘I’m going to get this.’ He’s like, ‘I’ll just split it with you.’ But I’m like,’ Get your own! You can have some, but I’m not splitting it.'”
