Given that Maddie Duggar and Jason Duggar met on social media while living in different states, their relationship has raised some eyebrows. Because they’ve said they met each other on Instagram, some people suspected that Maddie was a 19 Kids and Counting and Counting On fan who slid into Jason’s DMs (or something of that nature). During an April 24 Q&A on their YouTube channel, 21-year-old Maddie addressed these rumors.
Maddie and Jason really did meet on Instagram.
Ahead of their October 2024 wedding, the couple told People that they connected on Instagram in December 2023. At the time, Jason told the publication that he “kind of basically got lost on there” while talking to his sister Jana Duggar and giving her dating advice. “I was telling her, I was like, ‘Listen, Jana, you got to put yourself out there if you want to find a guy,'” Jason, 25, said. “So I was like, ‘Look, listen, I’m going to hop on here just to find someone, just to show you that I can do it.'”
Jason’s experiment seemed to work. According to Maddie, he just stumbled upon her profile. “Jase found my profile just because he accidentally tapped on the notifications button, he saw my profile picture,” Maddie said. “He was like, ‘Oh, she’s cute.’ It was definitely a God thing though. There’s no way we would’ve found each other. It was just crazy.”
They addressed the topic again during their Q&A.
During their first Q&A, Maddie and Jason said they’ve received a lot of questions about how they met. Maddie, who is from Tennessee, reiterated that they met each other on Instagram. “There are rumors that I am a crazy fangirl,” Maddie acknowledged. However, she denied these claims. While she admitted that she is obviously “a fan of [Jason] now,” she said she “was not a crazy fangirl” when they met.
Maddie said her family had only watched ‘a few episodes.’
While she had seen episodes of 19 Kids and Counting and/or Counting On, she was not an “avid fan” of the Duggars. “My family did watch a few episodes, like, on a beach vacation randomly,” she said. She recalled being reminded of the Duggar family while scrolling through TikTok one day. “I was on TikTok one day and I was scrolling along, and it was a video of where each of the Duggar kids is now. I was like, ‘Oh, I remember them. I’ve seen them before,’” she explained. When Jason appeared in the video, Maddie thought, “Oh, he’s cute. He’s my age. I want to know more about this guy.”
She proceeded to search for his Instagram but merely thought he was ‘a cute guy on Instagram.’
Because she wanted to find out more about Jason, Maddie found his Instagram “as one does.” Looking through his profile, she thought, “He is cute. He works out.” She also remembered seeing the tour of his treehouse and “thought it was really cool.” She “liked” the treehouse video, but didn’t expect anything to happen.
“That was about it,” Maddie explained. “I didn’t think anything was going to come of that. He was just a cute guy on Instagram. He’s kinda cool and he posts cool content.”
Jason then explained his side of the story.
He said he happened to see Maddie’s Instagram, in part because he’s not very “tech savvy.” When he went to check his messages, he accidentally clicked the notifications button on the platform. Maddie was at the top of his notifications because she had recently followed him and liked his treehouse video.
Jason said Maddie’s profile stood out to him because her name was spelled out with “big, large letters.” Maddie joked that “the bubble letters did it for him.” Jason said he clicked on it wanting to know if it was “a new setting that Instagram’s doing.” But after he clicked on it, he realized it was not a new Instagram feature and just something Maddie did herself. Once he was already looking at Maddie’s profile though, Jason happened to notice that Maddie was “pretty hot” and had a Bible verse in her Instagram bio.
He then slid into her Instagram DMs about a week later and gave her his phone number so they could text instead. They described starting out as friends — but it was “awkward.”
After they decided to just be friends, they really got to know each other better.
With all of the awkwardness that came from texting and talking on FaceTime, Jason and Maddie initially decided to just be friends. They both said there was “no chemistry” between them at first. However, once they decided they would get to know each other better as friends, they both felt more comfortable being themselves and realized they might actually have romantic chemistry after all.
