Chip Gaines’ Romance With Wife Joanna Gaines Almost Didn’t Happen Because He Was ‘Hell-Bent’ on Marrying Another Woman Before They Met

HGTV power couple Chip and Joanna Gaines have been together for so long, we can’t even imagine a time when they didn’t know each other. But as it turns out, the pair almost didn’t get together.

Before they met and fell in love, Chip was in a relationship with another woman he considered marrying until he took things a little too far.

Chip Gaines was ‘hell-bent’ on marrying his former girlfriend, despite not being the best boyfriend

Based off of their long-lasting relationship, one might assume Chip Gaines always knew his wife Joanna was the love of his life. While she is the apple of his eye today, Jo actually wasn’t the first woman Chip was head over heels for.

In an essay shared in a 2017 issue of Magnolia Journal, the Fixer Upper star revealed that before beginning his love journey with Jo, he dated a woman whom he gave the pseudonym “Amy.” 

“Amy put up with me despite my terrible approach to relationships,” he explained, per Country Living. “She and I dated for upward of two years.”

Well into their relationship, Amy asked Gaines where things were going while he visited her in London. Gaines confessed at that time that he wasn’t entirely sure.

“I, being a complete idiot, said something along the lines of ‘You know, I’ve never given it much thought,'” he shared.

After that discussion, Gaines realized he had broken Amy’s heart and made up his mind about what he wanted the next step in their relationship to be.

“I felt convinced that Amy was the one,” the home improvement expert said. “I walked off that plane hell-bent on making that young woman my wife.”

Chip admitted to pushing things a little too far in the relationship

After Amy returned home to Texas from London, Chip Gaines began taking their relationship more seriously.

Not only did he ask for her parent’s blessing to propose (they said no), he also went the extra mile to show Amy how much she meant to him. One way he did this was by building her a stone wall as a token of his affection. However, the gesture didn’t go over too well.

“My small construction company had just been hired to build a stone retaining wall here in Waco,” Gaines wrote in the magazine. “So just after I finished that wall, without any forethought, I hooked up my trailer containing leftover stone and building materials, and I drove to her apartment in the dead of night.”

Thinking she would appreciate it, Gaines built a small wall containing a love letter. It wasn’t long after that Amy’s roommates discovered his work, not seeing the note, and immediately freaked out.

“It’s not like I told anyone the note was hidden there,” the Fixer Upper star continued. “So the only thing any of these young ladies saw was this wall …which apparently resembled a tombstone.”

Following that unintentional disaster, Amy’s father wrote Gaines a “stern” letter expressing “his concerns over my level of persistence.”

It was then Gaines realized that he had overdone it in his relationship with Amy.

“I really respected this man, and for the first time throughout this whole ordeal, I realized that even though my intentions were good, I had pushed this too far,” he recalled.

With that, Gaines gave up on his relationship with Amy.

Chip Gaines’ relationship with Amy prepared him for Joanna

After ending things with Amy, Chip Gaines met Joanna in 2001. The two eventually began dating and soon fell in love. In 2003, the pair wed in Waco, Texas, at the Earle Harrison House, a historic mansion that Joanna once said looks like where they had their first date, per Us Weekly.

Today, the two are still happily married.

Looking back, Chip is happy things didn’t work out between him and Amy. If they had stayed together, he probably would have never met Joanna, which means there wouldn’t be an HGTV show, Magnolia Market, or Drake, Ella, Duke, Emmie, and Crew.

“It’s hard for me to articulate how grateful I am that we don’t always get what we want,” he shared in his essay. “Sometimes it takes a strongly worded dad letter to convince me that it’s time to leave a dream behind.”

Though his relationship with Amy didn’t pan out the way he had hoped, Gaines believes that his experience with his ex-girlfriend prepared him for life with Joanna.

“I knew almost from the beginning that I wanted a future with [Joanna],” he concluded. “I wasn’t ready to settle down at that moment, but the idea was no longer foreign.”