Counting On: The Truth About How Jessa Duggar And Ben Seewald Met
Jessa Duggar and Ben Seewald had a chance meeting when she was 20 and he was 17 years old. The Counting On stars both had a crush on each other at first sight, but it took a while to get their relationship off the ground. For starters, Seewald lived in a different area of Arkansas — when he first saw Duggar, his family was on a mini vacation near the Duggars and ended up at his future bride's church, according to several entries in TheSeewaldFamily.com.
For Seewald's birthday in May 2017, Duggar wrote about their first meeting from her perspective. "I spotted you, the 'new guy,' and our eyes met for a second," she wrote, before revealing that when they finally spoke it was "slightly awkward." Duggar continued, "Leaving church that day, I had no clue if I'd ever see you again... but you'd be back! Three weeks later, you showed up at our church again, and afterward, my brothers invited you over to our house to hang out for the afternoon and have supper with us." Seewald built a relationship with Duggar's brothers and her father, Jim Bob, which eventually led him to courting Duggar.
Ben's version of their love story is just as cute
Once Seewald saw Duggar, he convinced his family to go to a Christian conference where he could see her and her brothers again. "Jim Bob and I talked for about 15 minutes or so, and I got his number!!! I was so pumped!" Seewald wrote on the couple's blog in March 2015.
Since Seewald lived far, he had to save up a lot to see Duggar. "I was working at a Country Club Golf Course at this time, and would work overtime to get what the other guys jokingly called my 'Duggar money,' so I could go up and visit Jessa's family about once every month and a half," he wrote. The now-father-of-three made sure to ask the Duggars ahead of time if the whole family was around before he would visit. "I wanted to make sure Jessa would be there before I drove four hours there and four hours back just for a few hours of church and fellowship on a Sunday," he wrote.
Eventually, Seewald asked Duggar's father for her number and they started courting. Seewald proposed on August 4, 2014 and the Counting On couple got married in November that year. They have since had three kids.