Joy-Anna Duggar Forsyth has never viewed the four-year age difference between herself and husband Austin Forsyth as particularly dramatic, but she understands why it can look different when their relationship is viewed through the ages they were when it began.
The former Counting On star, now 28, revisited her relationship with Austin, 32, during the Aug. 19 episode of her sister Jinger Vuolo’s Jinger & Jeremy Podcast. The sisters compared their own marriages and talked about how marrying young shaped the way those age differences felt at the time.
Joy-Anna and Austin first crossed paths as children, when she was about 4 and he was 8. Their families later saw less of one another before reconnecting, and Joy-Anna said she began “crushing hard” on him around age 14, according to PEOPLE’s account of the conversation.
Their romantic relationship developed years later, shortly before she turned 18, and they ultimately married in May 2017 when she was 19 and he was 23.
Jinger Says the Four-Year Gap Seemed Bigger Because Joy-Anna Was So Young
Jinger pointed out that she actually has a larger age difference with her own husband, Jeremy Vuolo, than Joy-Anna has with Austin. Still, the four years separating her sister and brother-in-law always felt more significant to her because she remembered how young Joy-Anna was when the relationship became serious.
“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. E! News noted that Joy-Anna was 19 when she married Austin, while Jinger was 22 when she married Jeremy in November 2016. Jinger, now 32, and Jeremy, 38, have a six-year age difference.
Joy-Anna Was ‘Crushing Hard’ at 14, but They Were Not Dating
Joy-Anna explained that she and Austin knew of each other from childhood but did not spend much time together for several years after their families began attending different churches.
That changed after Austin got his driver’s license and started spending more time with Joy-Anna’s older brothers. Football, broom ball and other activities brought him around the Duggar family regularly. By 14, Joy-Anna said she was “crushing hard” on him.
She has previously made clear that those feelings were not the beginning of a teenage relationship. During a 2024 interview with Austin on the Unplanned podcast, Joy-Anna recalled being convinced as a teenager that she would someday end up with him, while Austin said he did not know she had a crush on him at the time.
Their courtship came later. Joy-Anna said on the new podcast that they began dating shortly before she turned 18. The couple publicly announced their courtship in November 2016, became engaged the following year and married on May 26, 2017.
She Says She Would Have Married Him ‘From Day One’
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Once their romantic relationship actually began, Joy-Anna said she had little uncertainty about where she wanted it to lead. “I would have married him from day one,” she said during the original Jinger & Jeremy Podcast episode.
Her certainty about Austin, however, did not mean she fully understood what marriage would require. Joy-Anna admitted that while dating and engaged, she did not think much beyond a romantic picture of their future together.
“I didn’t think past ‘we’re going to have a farmhouse and we’re going to live happily ever after,’” she recalled. She knew she believed Austin was the person she wanted to marry and assumed everything else would work itself out. “There was a lot that surprised me,” she acknowledged.
Joy-Anna Opens Up About Post-Wedding Realities
The Aug. 19 episode focused heavily on what happened after the wedding. The official description for the episode says Joy-Anna and Jinger discussed learning to communicate, dealing with miscommunication during arguments, balancing work and family life and developing as individuals after marriage.
For Joy-Anna, that meant discovering that a strong conviction about marrying Austin did not automatically provide answers to every practical question they would face together.
The couple has now been married for more than nine years. They share three children: Gideon, 8, Evelyn, 5, and Gunner, 3. In 2019, Joy-Anna experienced a pregnancy loss at 20 weeks with their daughter Annabell.