What to Know
The Duggars and the Forsyths knew each other for years before Joy-Anna Duggar and Austin Forsyth got married in 2017, and that means that Joy had the opportunity to crush on her future husband for a lot longer than anyone thought, even though he is a full four years older than she is. Some people believed that the age gap between them is a a little much, and it’s not something that Joy usually talks about… until her latest appearance on sister Jinger Duggar’s podcast, of course.
Joy talked about her relationship with Austin before things turned romantic.
When Joy appeared on the new episode of Jinger’s podcast, the sisters talked about her relationship with Austin and how young they were when they first met. At the time, Austin was 8 and Joy was 4 — barely out of the toddler phase — and he and his family had just moved to Arkansas from Texas.
“But then his family … I think they had visited wherever we were having church, and then they, like, went and they had a different church, and we didn’t see each other, really, very often until he got his driver’s license and started playing football and broom ball with the boys,” Joy explained.
By the time she hit her teenage years, her crush on Austin was a done deal, though it did take him several more years to return her feelings. It makes sense — when she was 14, he was 18, a legal adult.
She was pretty young when they got married.
Joy and Austin began dating just before she turned 18, and she said she “would have married him from day one.”
“I don’t think when we were dating and engaged, I didn’t think past ‘we’re going to have a farmhouse and we’re going to live happily ever after,’” Joy explained. “I didn’t think past like, ‘I know he’s the one. It’s going to work out. Everything’s going to be fine.’ So there was a lot that surprised me.”
Joy was 19 and Austin was 23 when they tied the knot, and since then, they’ve gone on to welcome three kids (and Joy mentioned on the podcast that she doesn’t think she’s done having babies quite yet).
Joy doesn’t seem bothered by their age gap at all.
Jinger pointed out that the age difference between her and her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, is even bigger (they are six years apart) but the one between Joy and Austin feels more “significant” in their family since their relationship began while Joy was still just a teenager.
In the end, though, it seems like it definitely worked out for Joy. Out of all of the sisters, she seems to be one of the happiest. That says a lot!
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