Erin and Ben Napier Were College Sweethearts! See a Full Timeline of Their Relationship

The bond that Erin Napier and her husband, Ben Napier, share is sweet as can be! The Home Town hosts met in college and have had such an epic love story that is nothing short of a fairytale. The HGTV couple also became parents to two daughters, Helen and Mae.

Erin has never shied away from sharing cute details about her marriage on her Laurel Mercantile blog. In a February 2010 post, the New York Times bestselling author gushed over her husband after a trip to the grocery store. 

“We were pulling up to park when an especially good one, one of those you just can’t skip came on,” she recalled. “We sat there with the car still running and I crawled into Ben’s lap, and he held me tight while we listened to ‘Let it Be Me’ by Ray Lamontagne. Ben told me, ‘I have never been so happy in my life.’ I said, ‘Me too.’ And I swear I’ve never meant anything more.” 

At the forefront of their lasting marriage is their strong Christian faith. Ben, the son of two ministers, served as a youth minister before focusing on a career in the home renovation space. 

​​“Faith has been part of my life for as long as I have been alive, and it’s the guiding hand in every decision we make together as a family,” he said in an October 2018 interview with Lemuria. 

While the couple both had a love for home design, they did not have any professional experience before Home Town aired. They did, however, gain a tremendous amount of design knowledge after renovating their own 1925 craftsman cottage in Laurel, Mississippi. They personalized the home with tons of family photographs hanging on the walls and vintage furniture items. 

“Our walls are covered with the people we love, our grandparents and parents,” Erin shared in a January 2016 Instagram post. “Our people were young and silly and adventurous, they shaped who we are and what we become, and their presence everywhere we turn makes home feel the way it should.”

The couple gained a lot of attention online after sharing their home renovation project with their social media followers. Still, they never expected to become television stars.

“The way it all happened was crazy,” Ben told People in April 2020. “It was never something we thought would turn into a career.”

Keep scrolling to see a timeline of Erin and Ben’s relationship.