HGTV Stars Dave and Jenny Marrs Open Up about Emotional New Season
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Dave and Jenny Marrs are back! After a jaunt overseas for Fixer to Fabulous: Italiano, the powerhouse couple is back in their hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas, for season 6 of their HGTV mainstay. In the new episodes, Dave and Jenny take on some seriously challenging renovations and emotional projects full of heart. They sat down with Country Living ahead of the premiere to give a sneak peek at what’s to come.
Back to Bentonville
Season 6 opens up with a heartfelt episode that finds Dave and Jenny working with a military couple who lost their daughter. Accustomed to moving frequently, they decided to stay in their home where they felt closest to their daughter. But, in order to make the house work for them, they needed a lot of help. Dave and Jenny arrived to transform their space, first by removing tons (and tons!) of brick, and then adding plenty of functional details and personal touches. Dave said, “It was one of the bigger demos we’ve ever done where you’re not literally tearing down the house.”
Dave and Jenny are adept in handling these emotional renovations (even though Dave admits he gets “sand in his eyes” frequently). He says, “You want to honor the house that their daughter lived in and at the same time make it fit their family and fit something that they want to live in forever, so it’s a definite balance of trying to strip out the stuff they don’t need but still keep that character of the home.”
Jenny adds, “They were very sweet, a wonderful family, very inspiring, and when you lose someone, it’s important to keep talking about them and to share the memories and incorporate those memories as you move forward. They had this really beautiful way of preserving their past and their heritage, and so we got to step into that and continue to do that with their daughter’s memory.”
A 24-Hour Renovation
Another special episode finds Dave and Jenny working with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. They teamed up with their friend Jay Cobb, who was a patient at St. Jude as a child, to remodel a home in just 24 hours. Jay has done 24-hour backyard renovations for families before, but after hearing one family’s story, they decided to do something bigger while sticking to the tight timeline.
When the Marrs family found out that a daughter and mother had both been diagnosed with cancer, they stepped in to lend a helping hand. Jenny said, “The fact that they both were walking through cancer treatment at the same time, it’s just so overwhelming to think about as a mom, because you’re wanting to care for your kid, and then you’re scared for yourself and for your kid, it’s just so overwhelming and hard. And so they’ve just been walking a really hard road for quite a while, and Jay told us their story and we were like, we gotta do something big, we gotta do something for mom too—we can’t just do the backyard.”
They gathered up a team of volunteers (including their own children) and got materials donated and, in just 24 hours, renovated the exterior, replaced the roof, updated the backyard, and renovated the kitchen and bathroom. Jenny said, “It was a very daunting task to say the least, but it was also incredibly rewarding, and really fun and everyone of our contractors and subcontractors and our team here in Bentonville, plus all of the volunteers from Tulsa were there. It was probably the only time that we’ve been in a remodel that no one is complaining—everyone was there with a single mission to surprise this family.”
What’s Next
House + Love = Home
Dave and Jenny are the busy parents of five children, ranging in age from 5 to 14. They run a berry farm that benefits orphaned children in Zimbabwe, and they own a local mercantile in their hometown with a second store in the works. But Jenny shared that there’s another major development on the horizon: She’s writing a book! Her first book, House + Love = Home: Creating Warm, Intentional Spaces for a Beautiful Life, was released in 2023, and now she’s writing a memoir. Jenny explained that she’s in the “final editing process” and it should be out this fall!
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