Erin Napier and Ben Napier are HGTV royalty, and their real-life romance is just as adorable as fans see on Home Town.
“Oh, he surprises me [all the time.] This is what [our] greatest date nights are like: We’re at home and we put the kids to bed, and then he says, ‘OK, now go to the room, close the door, and when you come back out, it’ll be something special,” Erin, 38, exclusively gushed to Us Weekly while promoting her new Heirloom Rooms book of essays. “I don’t know how he’s the most thoughtful person on Earth. Who couldn’t be happy with someone like [that]? He goes way out of his way to make our marriage intentional.”
The Home Town personality noted that Ben, 40, also “somehow” manages to surprise her at least three times every year — on her birthday, Valentine’s Day and their wedding anniversary.
“Every time it’s been different, but this time [for my birthday,] he got my mom and dad to come over and do the bedtime routine with the girls [daughters Helen and Mae] and put them to bed. And he said, ‘Go to our room whenever you’re done doing what you have to do for the day,’” Erin recalled. “And I went and there were three dresses he had bought that were laid out, and he said, ‘Choose your favorite. If you don’t like any of ’em, don’t wear any of them, but choose a favorite and then come out to the barn.’”
When Erin went out to the barn — Ben had been secretly working to get it in “better shape” with improved insulation — she realized that he had transformed part of the space into a painting studio for her.
“I got out there and he had my favorite meal from my favorite restaurant and my favorite music and my favorite candle and he had moved all of the things from my old art studio where we used to have a loft in downtown,” she told Us.
Erin and Ben met when they were in college and were smitten immediately. “I’ve had a crush on him since I was 19, and I still do!” Erin gushed. “I have pinch-me moments when I think [that] I get to work with him all day, every day. I feel really lucky. … The greatest joy of my life is that I get to work with Ben every day.”
Erin and Ben, who got married in 2008, burst onto the HGTV scene in 2016 with the premiere of Home Town. The show chronicles their interior design and home renovation business in Laurel, Mississippi.
“Because we met when we were young, our adult identities are really formed around each other,” Erin said. “We weren’t like two separate trees growing in the woods [but] you ever see two trees that got stuck together and then they just grew? That’s kind of how we are when I think of us in my mind’s eye. We grew up together and that makes me think meeting and marrying young, I think can be a very good thing.”
Not only are Erin and Ben “together all the time,” but they also have learned that “communication really is key” for a healthy relationship.
“We’re just very, very good about telling each other every single detail of every single thing that’s happening in each other’s life [that is] separate from each other,” she told Us. “If you have all the information, there is less to argue about and less to fight about. And so, when you start to feel something creeping up, like a disagreement, just go ahead and talk about it. Don’t let things fester and turn into a big story that’s not the real truth.”
In addition to her work with Ben, Erin wrote a book of essays, titled Heirloom Rooms: Soulful Stories of Home, to chronicle each room in the Napier household.
“I’m obsessed with documenting and I journal every single day of my life. I write in a journal [all] the things that happened,” Erin told Us of her literary inspiration. “And then I thought, ‘I need to document this house that we live in because what if one day it’s not ours anymore? And our girls want to remember exactly what it was like.’ … I wanted to make a book that encourages people [to] celebrate where you are right now [and] the stage you’re living in. It’s not perfect and it wasn’t supposed to be. I hope that people see themselves in this book.”
With reporting by Charlie Cooper
