Are HGTV’s Nate Berkus & Jeremiah Brent Still Together?
It’s been six years since new episodes of Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent‘s HGTV show Nate & Jeremiah by Design have come out, but they’re still one of the network’s most beloved couples.
In 2024, Brent joined Queer Eye as the expert on interior design and home renovation, replacing Bobby Berk. Meanwhile, Berkus has been busy with his design firm, and he released the book Foundations in November.
Now that the two are working on separate projects, where does their relationship stand? Scroll down for the answer to that and more.
How did Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent meet?
Berkus and Brent actually first met three years before they started dating, but Berkus had a “serious boyfriend” at the time. “The timing was just never really right like that,” Brent told HGTV.
However, they reconnected in 2012 at their mutual friend Rachel Zoe‘s birthday party. “Rachel did say to us, ‘You guys would be absolutely in love with each other,'” the guys recalled. At the event, Berkus asked Brent to go antique shopping with him. They described their first date as “magic.”
The pair married at the New York Public Library in 2014.
In November 2025, Berkus recalled Zoe telling him about Brent after she first hired him. “She called me and was like, ‘Oh my god, we just hired this guy. He’s so cute. We call him baby Nate in the office.’ And she was like, ‘I know that you would love him. Like I actually think you would really love him,'” Berkus shared. He had to point out to her that he was “dating one of [her] really good friends” at the time.
“And she was like, ‘No, I know, but I’m just saying, I’m not saying you should do anything about. I just think, I don’t know, I think I’m right,” Berkus added. Turned out she was!
Are Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent still together?
Yes, Berkus and Brent are still together. Berkus honored Brent on his birthday in November. Along with a photo of them hugging, he gushed, “You are simply the best. Husband. Father. Person. Happy Birthday my love.”
Even more recently, Brent posted a photo of Berkus kissing him on the cheek as they attended an event together. “Surrounded by the very best,” he captioned it. “Thank you.”
The couple celebrated their 11-year wedding anniversary in May. “Loving you — and being loved by you — is the greatest gift of all,” Brent gushed on Instagram, while Berkus wrote, “Happy Anniversary my love. You make everything better.”
What is the age gap between Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent?
Berkus and Brent have a 13-year age gap. Berkus was born on September 17, 1971, while Brent was born on November 24, 1984.
How many kids do Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent have?
Berkus and Brent have a daughter, Poppy, and a son, Oskar, born via surrogate in March 2015 and March 2018, respectively. They have called surrogacy a “beautiful” experience.
“It’s different surrogates [and egg donors] for both kids. And to be frank with you, we had really beautiful experiences both times,” Brent confirmed in an interview with She Knows. “We’ll spend our entire lives thanking our surrogates for what they did and helping make our family whole. We’re still very close to both of them. Our kids will know them.”
What happened to Nate Berkus’ fiancé?
Years before Berkus and Brent got together, the former was engaged to another man named Fernando Bengoechea, who died on December 26, 2004, at the age of 39. Berkus and Bengoechea were vacationing in Sri Lanka when a tsunami hit, and while Berkus survived, his fiancé’s body was never found.
In his book The Things That Matter, Berkus recalled his first meeting with Bengoechea. “Fernando and I met in 2003 at a photo shoot for O at Home magazine,” he shared. “He had been hired to photograph the makeover process of a living room I was brought in to redo.”
View this post on Instagram
He also recalled the day of the tsunami, which hit in the morning while the couple was still in bed in their hut by the beach. “Water started trickling, and then pouring, into the area between the brick and the thatched roof, as if someone were emptying a giant pitcher of water over us,” Berkus wrote. “Fernando got out of bed immediately and grabbed his camera to make sure it didn’t get wet. The children’s backpacks we had arranged so neatly on the floor of the hut began swirling around, and the next thing I knew, it was pitch black, and I was pinned underneath the bed from the pressure of the water. A few seconds later, the roof of our hut was torn off, and Fernando and I were swept out of the hut by strong currents.”
After being pulled underwater “half a dozen times,” sometimes “for maybe a minute or so” at once, Berkus was able to start swimming and reached the surface.
“Fernando popped up out of the water, only four feet away from me,” he continued. “I had no idea where we were. I didn’t know how far the water had taken us or how close or how far away we were to land. All I could make out was a sea of debris. Then things began coming into focus. I spotted a half-submerged telephone pole. I saw the jut of a rooftop.”
After being dragged at “about 40 miles per hour” in the water, Berkus and Bengoechea reached a telephone pole. They held onto it, but another wave crashed into them, separating them a final time. “That was the last time I ever saw Fernando, or felt Fernando. I say felt because he and I were always touching in one way or another,” Berkus recalled.
The interior designer was swept toward the village and was able to climb a fence that helped him get on the roof of a house, where he connected with others who had left for a hilltop, the highest ground in the area.
Berkus and Brent chose the name “Oskar” for their son because it was Bengoechea’s middle name. “We have always honored Fernando’s memory in our relationship. He’s a part of our love story,” Brent told People. “It’s such an important chapter in Nate’s life. So the idea that we can honor his memory in a beautiful way was exciting to us.”
