Joanna Gaines Just Shared Why She and Chip Almost Didn't Make It Past Their First Date

From Country Living

• Joanna Gaines has confessed that she thought her husband, Chip Gaines, was "just a bit crazy" when they first met.

• The design maven says she almost almost didn't give Chip a second date.

Magnolia power couple Chip and Joanna Gaines may seem like a match made in home improvement heaven, but we were shocked to learn that she didn't always think so.

Joanna opened up about her surprising first impression of Chip in Magnolia Journal's summer "Risk" issue, admitting that "it wasn't love at first sight for Chip and me."

"For one thing, I was typically attracted to guys who were more on the quiet side. Based on our first date, it was clear that Chip was anything but quiet," the former Fixer Upper star wrote in an essay titled "Slow Yes."

"He was all over the place, talking about the businesses he'd started, and these ideas he had, and how he was buying up little houses and flipping them, and I was wondering if he was just a bit crazy. In my mind, I somewhat instinctively checked his penchant for risk and chatty nature as two reasons we probably wouldn't go on a second date."

Thankfully, Joanna saw a glimmer of a kindred spirit in Chip and ended up giving him a second chance.

"All the ideas and dreams he held for himself were anything but ordinary, and he talked about the world around him through the lens of untapped potential," she continued.

"When Chip did eventually stop talking, if only to take a breath, I found myself wanting to fill the silence with plans and dreams of my own. Ideas that I kept close and half-baked for fear that I didn't have what it would take to turn them into realities. Dreams that I knew required the heart of a risk taker, a quality I'd long considered to be one I simply didn't possess. Somehow those aspirations felt real, achievable even, in Chip's company."

Of course, we know that Chip and Joanna got their happy ending and have achieved so much together since they tied the knot in 2003. The couple will be celebrating their 17th wedding anniversary on May 31, as well as the highly anticipated upcoming launch of their new Magnolia Network. They also share five beautiful children: Drake, Ella, Duke, Emmie, and baby Crew.

Joanna says she's learned so much from Chip, including to resist making "snap judgements" about both people and projects.

"Chip and I had already proved in our own relationship what can happen when I let something grow on me instead of making a snap judgment or an unwavering conclusion at first glance," she wrote in Magnolia Journal. "Chip calls it my 'slow yes' and I've learned to trust it above all else in matters of both work and home."

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