Chip Gaines Thanks Wife Joanna for Giving Him the ‘Most Beautiful Life’ in Sweet 20-Year Anniversary Tribute
The Magnolia Network couple share five children — Drake, Ella, Duke, Emmie and Crew — together
Instagram/joannagaines
Chip and Joanna Gaines are celebrating two decades of matrimonial bliss!
On Wednesday, the Magnolia Network couple each shared sweet tributes to each other on Instagram in honor of their 20th wedding anniversary. Chip, 48, celebrated the milestone with a photo of his wife biting down on a flower alongside a heartwarming caption.
“20 years with the most incredible, most powerful, most beautiful woman I've ever known,” he wrote. “You've given me the most beautiful life and I'm so grateful to God for you @joannagaines ❤️ 20 years ago today, you made me the happiest man on earth. Thank you for everything Jo 🥂”
Meanwhile Joanna, 45, posted a moving photo booth strip of the couple striking a series of poses. “What a wonderful 20 years 🫶 Happy Anniversary @chipgaines!” Joanna captioned the post.
In the first snap in her post, the pair keep it simple with big smiles. The next shot shows Chip planting a sweet kiss on his wife’s cheek, followed by the two throwing peace signs into the air in the next photo. The strip ends with another smiley shot of the married couple, except this time they put their hands together to form a heart.
Related: Chip and Joanna Gaines Have a Glam Date Night at the White House for South Korea State Dinner
The couple’s love story goes way back. In fact, they have Joanna’s father to thank for bringing them together, as the two first met at his auto shop in Waco, Texas.
In a special edition of PEOPLE, Chip & Joanna Gaines: 20 Years of Marriage and Magnolia, released in March, Chip recalled how he would hang out Joanna’s dad’s shop “incessantly” when he first saw her and that she finally agreed to go on a date with him one week later.
Related: Joanna Gaines Reveals She Knew She'd Marry Chip on Their First Date: 'Right Off the Bat'
Instagram/joannagaines
Joanna added that she knew her feelings for Chip ran deep immediately after the first date.
"Starstruck. Right off the bat," she 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."
The couple got engaged in 2002 and officially tied the knot in May 2003. They now share five children together — Drake, 18, Ella, 16, Duke, 14, Emmie, 13 and Crew, 4.
While the two formed a lasting love early on in their relationship, Chip recalled to PEOPLE that it wasn’t always smooth sailing at the beginning of their marriage. Juggling the early business of Magnolia while also raising young children challenged the pair.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
"In the first months of our marriage, we were always flipping a house. We were working on this little shop. We had babies early in the process. We pretty quickly had to say, 'We're either going to go at each other and blow this thing up, you and I trying to fight each other about every nook and cranny, or we can figure out how to come together as a team,'" Chip recalled to PEOPLE.
He continued: "We've had our challenges. I don't want to belittle that piece of the equation. But Jo and I — I don't know if it's our hearts — we're aligned in this sweet way to where we've just always been there for each other."
For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!
Read the original article on People.
