Joanna Gaines Admits When Chip First Said 'I Love You,' She Made a Classic Misstep and They Briefly Broke Up
The Magnolia Network couple opened up about their 20 years of marriage in a new special edition of PEOPLE
Joanna Gaines is able to look back and laugh at her early relationship jitters with husband Chip.
In a new special edition of PEOPLE, Chip & Joanna Gaines: 20 Years of Marriage and Magnolia, the Fixer Upper: Welcome Home stars opened up about the first time Chip said "I love you" and Joanna . . . didn't.
"A couple months into it, you were like, 'I love you.' Joanna recalls in the joint interview. "And I was like, 'Oh, thank you.' That made him a little upset."
Chip adds that his now-wife was "just so nervous and so weird" about the three little words. But Joanna begs to differ.
"I was not nervous. I was just like, 'I've never said I love you to anybody,'" she tells him. "I'm telling you I was so old-fashioned in that. Sometimes you just have this picture of how it's going to be — and this was a very different picture. So I was just cautious in a lot of ways."
Related:Joanna Gaines Reveals She Knew She'd Marry Chip on Their First Date: 'Right Off the Bat'
In fact, Joanna's careful discernment caused the pair to break up for a week. "We took a week off to just be like, 'Is this for us? Is this not?'" she reveals.
The Magnolia Network founders admit they couldn't even go that long without seeing each other again.
"Before the week was even out, we were meeting at a taco shop," says Joanna.
From there the romance was something of a whirlwind. They "got engaged in December, then in May we got married," says Joanna. "So it was kind of a quick year and a half."
She admits everything about the early stages of their relationship was unexpected.
"I think the girl he was always drawn to was kind of the life of the party. He loved the outgoing ones, and I like the quiet ones," she adds. "We both were like, 'This isn't really what we thought we'd end up with.' But now we realize it was a perfect thing for us."
Despite their departure from their respective on-paper "types," Joanna knew Chip was was the one from the moment they met.
Before meeting Chip, Joanna says, "I was always attracted to quiet guys, to the guy that you didn't know what he was thinking. When Chip and I went on our first date, he didn't stop talking! In my mind I was like, 'Okay, this isn't going to work. Because he is not quiet, he's not mysterious. He's very just out there.' . . . Then I heard this voice say, 'This is who you're going to marry.' Call it God, call it whatever. This is the man you're going to marry."
For more from the Gaineses, as well as interviews, recipes, and home ideas from Magnolia Network experts including the Maine Cabin Masters, Zoë François, Hilton Carter, chef Erin French, garden guru Jamila Norman, and many others, pick up PEOPLE's new special edition, Chip & Joanna Gaines: 20 Years of Marriage and Magnolia, available now wherever magazines are sold.
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