Joy-Anna Duggar Makes Rare Comment About Age Gap With Husband Austin, Getting Married Young
Joy-Anna Duggar is opening up about getting married young to husband Austin Forsyth.
“I was 4 and he was 8 when they moved up from Texas,” Joy-Anna, 28, said during her appearance on the Wednesday, August 19, episode of sister Jinger Duggar and brother-in-law Jeremy Vuolo’s eponymous podcast.
“We actually met when we were really young,” the 19 Kids and Counting alum continued. “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-Anna admitted that she had been “crushing hard” on Austin, 32, when she was 14 and he was 18.
Jinger, 32, pointed out that although she and Jeremy, 38, are technically further apart in age, her sister’s age gap with Austin felt “a little bit more significant” because they were younger when they started dating.
“I always think you in Austin are further apart in age than you are, just because I remember you being so young,” she explained.
Joy-Anna was 19 years old when she married Austin in May 2017. He was 23.
“I would have married him from day one,” Joy-Anna told her sister.
After tying the knot, Joy-Anna and Austin went on to welcome son Gideon in February 2018, followed by daughter Evelyn in 2020 and son Gunner in 2023.
Shortly after welcoming the pair’s third child, Joy-Anna reflected on her family and whether she wanted to have more kids.
“Everyone is asking me how many babies I want — if I want more,” she said in a vlog in 2023. “And I’m like, ‘Gracious, guys, I just had a kid.’”
Joy-Anna added that she and Austin had discussed having “four or five” kids, but they weren’t sure if they were still committed to that goal.
“I don’t feel done,” she explained. “And I think the different friends I’ve talked to have always said when they’re done, they know. Like, ‘OK, this is my last one.’ They feel done. I haven’t gotten that feeling yet and I loved this whole experience … I feel like we could have another one.”
Joy-Anna and Jinger are two of Michelle and Jim-Bob Duggar’s 19 children. The family rose to fame on their TLC shows: 19 Kids and Counting and its spinoff, Counting On.
Last month, the sisters opened up about why they weren’t as close growing up.
“I would say we were close in proximity, but not, like, relationally,” Joy-Anna said on Jinger’s podcast. “The bond was not really there.”
Jinger added, “There was an age gap, and I felt like the age gap was segregated by sections. [Our family was] separated by an age gap of the older kids, the middle kids, the younger kids. I was, kind of, in the older section for many years [of] the six oldest.”
As the pair got older, though, their bond grew stronger.
“We live so far away, but out of all the sisters, I feel like I do talk to you the most,” Joy-Anna said, referring to Jinger’s home in California across the country from the rest of the Duggars in Arkansas. “We are very, maybe, just chill and we are who we are. I feel like we’re in the same season of life. At least for me on my side, I feel like I can just pick the phone up, and there’s no pressure to talk to you, but also when we do, it’s like there’s been no time between our conversations.”