Joy-Anna Duggar Reflects on Marrying Young and Her Age Gap with Husband Austin Forsyth: ‘I Would Have Married Him from Day One’

Joy-Anna and Austin Forsyth.

Joy-Anna Duggar is looking back on the early days of her relationship with husband Austin Forsyth, opening up about how young they were when their romance began, their four-year age difference, and the expectations she had before becoming a wife.

The former 19 Kids and Counting and Counting On star, now 28, discussed her marriage during an appearance on her sister Jinger Duggar Vuolo’s Jinger & Jeremy Podcast on Wednesday, Aug. 19. During the conversation, Joy-Anna reflected on the fact that she and Austin, 32, actually knew each other long before they began dating.

According to Joy-Anna, the two first met when they were children. She was around four years old at the time, while Austin was approximately eight.

“We actually met when we were really young,” Joy-Anna explained.

Austin’s family had moved from Texas, and at one point they visited the church attended by Joy-Anna’s family. However, their paths did not immediately remain closely connected. Joy-Anna recalled that Austin’s family later attended a different church, meaning the two families did not see each other regularly for some time.

That eventually changed as Austin grew older.

Joy-Anna said she began seeing more of him after he obtained his driver’s license and started spending time with her brothers, participating in activities including football and broom ball.

By the time Joy-Anna was about 14 and Austin was 18, her feelings toward him had changed considerably.

She admitted that she was already “crushing hard” on the man who would eventually become her husband.

During the podcast conversation, Jinger, 32, brought up the couple’s age gap. Jinger herself is married to Jeremy Vuolo, 38, giving them a larger numerical age difference than Joy-Anna and Austin. Still, Jinger said Joy-Anna’s four-year gap with Austin seemed more noticeable because of how young the couple were when they began their relationship and eventually married.

“I always think you and Austin are further apart in age than you are, just because I remember you being so young,” Jinger told her sister.

Joy-Anna and Austin officially began dating shortly before Joy-Anna turned 18. Their relationship quickly progressed, and they married in May 2017, when Joy-Anna was 19 and Austin was 23.

Looking back, Joy-Anna admitted she had little hesitation about the relationship at the time.

“I would have married him from day one,” she said.

However, nearly a decade of marriage and family life have given Joy-Anna a different perspective on how she viewed relationships as a teenager.

She explained that while dating and engaged, she had an extremely optimistic — and somewhat idealized — picture of married life. Rather than thinking deeply about the complexities that might come with building a life together, she imagined a simple future centered around love, family and a farmhouse.

“I don’t think when we were dating and engaged, I didn’t think past ‘we’re going to have a farmhouse and we’re going to live happily ever after,’” Joy-Anna recalled.

At the time, she said, she was confident Austin was the person she wanted to marry and assumed everything would naturally fall into place.

“I know he’s the one. It’s going to work out. Everything’s going to be fine,” she remembered thinking.

Experience eventually taught her that marriage involved more than that youthful vision.

“So there was a lot that surprised me,” she acknowledged.

Since their 2017 wedding, Joy-Anna and Austin have built the family she once imagined, although their journey has included both joyful milestones and significant heartbreak.

The couple are parents to three children.

Their oldest son, Gideon, is now 8. Their daughter, Evelyn, is 5, while their youngest son, Gunner, is 3.

The family also experienced a devastating pregnancy loss in 2019, when Joy-Anna lost their daughter Annabell at 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Joy-Anna has previously spoken publicly about how deeply the loss affected her. She later described herself as being in a “fog” for approximately six months afterward as she attempted to process the grief.

Despite the difficult experience, Joy-Anna and Austin continued expanding their family, eventually welcoming Evelyn and Gunner.

As a result of the couple’s public profile and the Duggar family’s history of having large families, speculation about whether Joy-Anna is expecting another child has remained a recurring topic online.

Earlier this year, Joy-Anna directly addressed rumors that she and Austin might be preparing to welcome a fourth child.

In February, she and Austin appeared on another episode of Jinger and Jeremy’s podcast, where Jeremy brought up reports and online discussions suggesting Joy-Anna was pregnant.

“Is there a rumor going around that you are pregnant?” Jeremy asked.

“Yes,” Joy-Anna replied.

Jinger immediately joked about the situation, saying, “That’s so Duggar of them!”

Joy-Anna and Austin Forsyth with their kids.

The exchange reflected how familiar pregnancy speculation has become for members of the Duggar family, many of whom grew up with their relationships, weddings and pregnancies receiving widespread public attention.

For Joy-Anna, however, her latest discussion focused less on whether her family might continue growing and more on how her perspective on marriage has evolved since she was a teenager.

Her relationship with Austin began during a formative period of her life. Although the couple had known each other since childhood, their romantic relationship started shortly before Joy-Anna’s 18th birthday, followed by marriage at 19.

At the time, she said, she was completely convinced about the relationship.

Years later, she can now recognize that confidence did not necessarily mean she understood everything marriage would involve.

Her comments suggest that although she remains committed to the decision she made, her understanding of partnership has become more nuanced through years of raising children, navigating personal challenges and experiencing loss together.

The four-year age difference between Joy-Anna and Austin may not appear particularly large now that they are 28 and 32. But as Jinger observed, the gap seemed more significant when Joy-Anna was still in her teens and Austin was entering his twenties.

Still, Joy-Anna made it clear that her younger self never viewed the age difference as something that would stop her from pursuing the relationship.

From developing a teenage crush on Austin at 14 to marrying him five years later, Joy-Anna said she had been confident about wanting a future with him from the beginning.

Today, almost nine years after their wedding, the couple share three children and a life that has included far more complexity than the simple farmhouse dream Joy-Anna once envisioned.

And while she admitted that marriage brought plenty of unexpected realities, one thing appears unchanged: when she first fell for Austin, Joy-Anna believed he was the person she wanted to marry — and, as she put it, she “would have married him from day one.”