The Touching Story Of HGTV Star Joanna Gaines' Long Lost (And Found) Aunt
In April 2023, Joanna Gaines of HGTV's "Fixer Upper" took a long-awaited trip to South Korea. The home reno star is a Kansas native, but her mother, Nan Stevens, emigrated from the East Asian country in 1972. In an effort to reconnect with her Korean heritage, Joanna set off with her husband, Chip Gaines, all their kiddos, her mom, and a few other family members, adding up to 24 in total. While visiting, the family was able to meet up with a long-lost relative — Joanna's aunt.
When Nan met her husband, Jerry Stevens, who was stationed in South Korea as a United States Army member, she couldn't wait to start a new adventure somewhere other than her hometown. However, Joanna revealed that in her excitement to start fresh, her mom may not have realized how much she was leaving behind. Joanna penned in Magnolia Journal about the time before the family trip, "My mom spent those months trying to contact her sister, who she hadn't seen in decades. The many years proved impossible to wade through. Number systems in South Korea had changed, making the number my mom had scribbled in her phone book useless," explained the People republished excerpt online.
The time between when Nan left in the early 1970s and Joanna's family trip in 2023 was likely a period of no contact for the sisters. Joanna also appears to have never spoken with or met her aunt before touching down in Seoul, South Korea.
It was an awakening for everyone
Joanna Gaines divulged that even as she and almost two dozen of her family members walked onto the plane, her mother, Nan Stevens, would not give up in the search for her sister. "A few days after we arrived, an old family friend was able to track down my aunt," she said of their arrival. "My mom met up with her in the lobby of our hotel, and we all got to watch them embrace in that hard-to-explain way where it feels like a lifetime has passed but also no time at all."
Not only was it the first time in decades that the sisters had seen each other, but also the first time in a lifetime many of the other Gaines family members had ever met Nan's close relative. "We had tears in our eyes, witnessing that missing part of my mom be found and restored," revealed Joanna. The "Magnolia Journal" author also expressed how amazing it was having her aunt accompany them on their planned activities. Being reunited with her sister and showing her children their heritage was "the proudest I've ever seen her," confessed Joanna of her mother.
The trip was incredibly moving in various ways for the HGTV star, who described feeling as if she was seeing her mother with fresh eyes when she donned her traditional hanbok, and feeling a surge of pride in her heritage when the rest of the family followed suit.
Joanna is ready to embrace her background
Growing up, Joanna Gaines confessed she tried to hide her heritage because she and her sister were bullied at their school. The multi-hyphenate was raised in Wichita, Kansas, for 12 years before moving to Austin, Texas. Despite not knowing her mother's family, who lived in South Korea, Joanna was close with her paternal grandparents.
On the podcast "For the Love," the "Fixer Upper" star explained, "My grandfather was Lebanese and my grandmother was German, they had nine children, they were all about gathering, being together, and then these really rich family meals." Family get-togethers with those relatives sounded like they could be a bit chaotic, but young Joanna cherished alone time with her grandpa spent learning to cook. "So he only taught me like three things, but those three times I was with my granddad were really the only three times I was actually with my granddad, because there was always so many people around and he was such a quiet man," she recalls. Even today, Joanna will cook those few precious recipes to remember her grandpa.
And now that she has experienced her heritage from her maternal side, the "Magnolia Table" author can embrace all of her rich familial backgrounds. To that end, the mother of five hopes to share her own traditions with her children while also creating new ones, allowing them to fully accept who they are.