Ben Napier is an unapologetic romantic. “He’s extremely married to the philosophy that every day, you should do something to make your spouse fall in love with you again,” his wife of 16 years, Erin, tells Us Weekly. The Laurel, Mississippi, couple’s warmth and palpable bond are part of what make their long-running HGTV reno series Home Town such a crowd-pleaser: It’s not unusual for him to interrupt an on-camera chat about, say, kitchen cabinets to spontaneously pick her up and whirl her around. (And yes, she’s always delighted!)
He outdid himself one Valentine’s Day when he hired a private chef for a backyard feast — French cuisine accompanied by French music, naturellement, and mood lighting. “He set up a big canvas tent on our girls’ swing set,” Erin recalls. (They share daughters Helen, 7, and Mae, 3.) “I was sick with Covid and kind of miserable, but he made me feel so special. It was like we had been on a trip. It was magical.”
After two decades together, Erin, 39, and Ben, 41, are just as smitten as they were when they fell in love at Jones County Junior College in the early 2000s. She was 19, he was 21; after crushing from afar, they clicked instantly when Erin interviewed Ben for the yearbook. “Six days later,” she says, “we decided we would get married.”
They’ve been partners since their newlywed days, when they moved 13 minutes away from college to her hometown of Laurel. Ben, a youth minister, and Erin, a graphic designer, joined forces to turn a 1925 Craftsman cottage into their dream home. Their social media footage of the impressive renovation caught the eye of an HGTV producer, and the rest is history… with a little bit of shop class and home ec thrown in. On top of their shows — the third season of Home Town Takeover premiered March 9 — they have three retail stores (Scotsman Co., Laurel Mercantile and the Scent Library), books (including the 2018 memoir Make Something Good Today and Erin’s children’s book, The Lantern House) and a furniture line.
Among their accomplishments, they’re most proud of the family they’ve built. “I don’t feel qualified to talk on much,” says Erin, “but I am so extremely happy in our marriage.” She and Ben sat down with Us to divulge their secrets.
We’re always talking — to the point of oversharing
“Erin and I always say communication is a key element in a happy marriage,” reports Ben, noting that working together has given the HGTV stars a leg up in that department. “The vast majority of our job is a director saying, ‘Hey, that just happened — give me some thoughts on it,’” he explains. “We ping-pong off each other.”
While online detractors may comment if it seems he’s not letting her speak on-screen or vice versa, he says that’s rarely the case. “What they don’t realize is that little 30-second snippet of us talking was taken from a 30-minute conversation.”
Erin says their shared history helps: “We’ve been together longer than we’ve been apart. We learned how to communicate together. It’s effortless now.” (One funny byproduct of their extensive combined past is that their memory can fail them. Asked about terms of endearment, Ben says they used to call each other Buster and Thumper… but now neither remembers why!)
The idea of spending 24/7 with a husband or wife may not appeal to everyone, but Ben insists couples can get over the initial discomfort. “Some people say, ‘Oh, I could never work with my spouse,’ but it may be that you’ve never actually tried,” he says. “If you go to your parents’ house and you’re only there for a couple days, you tend to start getting on each other’s nerves, but if you’re together for an extended period, you move beyond that, and you get into this groove together.”
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We trust each other
Fans may be surprised to learn that Erin occasionally struggles with jealousy. In fact, she confesses she wasn’t pleased when someone “who looks too much like a supermodel to be messaging Ben” DM’d him about working with the duo. While she says she trusts her husband “110 percent,” she admits her imagination sometimes runs wild, as it did on a random Tuesday when she got home and discovered Ben had taken a mid-afternoon shower. (He’d spilled something “all over” himself, he explains.) She called him but “was not accusatory,” Erin recounts. “I just wanted to let [him] know how creative my mind is.” Ben picks up the thread: “Before she even called, she was like, ‘This is silly. Why am I thinking this?’”
According to Ben, this “goes hand in hand with communication. How you break trust [is when someone feels forced to say], ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’” Of course, that’s rare because, Erin comments, “we’re together all the time. I hear everything that he hears. [Laughs.] I’m standing with him when he hears it!”
We know the little things count
There are many examples from their very thoughtful life: Erin takes the garbage out because, she explains, “He has so much to manage.” And every evening before bed, she preps Ben’s wake-up brew for the next day. “I don’t drink coffee, but he does, so I get the coffee maker ready the night before,” she notes. And sometimes there’s a special mug in the mix — cute! “We went to Ole Miss to speak at an event, so I put his Ole Miss mug [out]. It’s a little secret language we have. It’s just a mug, but it’s meaningful.” For the pair’s chat with Us, Erin chose a Laurel Mercantile mug “because we’re sitting here all day!”
For his part, Ben leaves Erin love notes. Every day. “They don’t say anything profound,” she says, “[just] things like, ‘I’m so thankful that it’s you and me, and that this is what our life is,’ or, ‘Thank you for being mine, and I’ll always do my best for you every day.’” (Ben is giddy to report little Helen now pens notes to him.)
He also oversees the gardens on the family’s small farm. “That’s a romantic gesture to me,” says Erin. “He makes sure we have something fresh I can [harvest] to cook.” And he’s quick to stock firewood and man the fireplace when required. “If it’s cold when I wake up, there’s a fire,” says Erin. Big picture, she adds, “Ben wants everyone to have the best possible experience, even if it’s just breakfast on a Tuesday morning.”
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We go big on romance, too
Ben steps up his game on special occasions, like Valentine’s Day. Their latest tradition: He orders a Chicago deep-dish pizza — a fave of Erin’s. “He did it right before Helen was born, and now it’s a thing,” she explains, noting that the girls are getting a master class from their dad in what they deserve. “This year we had pizza by candlelight with the girls and we listened to Italian music and he got them balloons and flowers and cards.”
She continues: “The girls are going to be ruined. They’re never going to find a husband who treats them as good as he does. Good luck to them!”
We show up for each other
Erin is still grateful to Ben for how he supported her when her now-deceased grandmother had a stroke in 2008, the year they tied the knot. “It didn’t look good. She had lost her speech, and I was just heartbroken,” Erin recalls. Out of nowhere, she began receiving texts from friends and loved ones saying they were thinking of her and praying for her grandmother. “We didn’t have social media then,” says Erin. “Ben had gone and texted everyone we knew [and asked them] to do that. That was one time [he] really showed up.” One of many. “I’m doing my best to [be a] mom and take care of the girls, and he’s always very supportive of everything I’ve got going on,” she gushes.
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We get creative with dates
With two young kids and a home improvement empire to run, Ben and Erin don’t have a ton of time to get out. “Date nights are planned six months in advance,” says Erin. (It takes less time to special-order tile!) “They happen once or twice a year.”
So lunch dates are a thing. Erin explains: “It doesn’t have to be dressing up and going out at night to a crowded restaurant. It can just be, ‘I’m going to pick you up on my lunch break, and we’ll get a hot dog at Costco.’”
We ensure devices aren’t divisive
They agree that electronics are a major issue for not just themselves but probably most couples. “They are attention stealers,” says Erin. “I bet phones take away from marriages more than anything else.”
Continues Ben: “It’s addictive. One of us will get sucked into looking at something, and the other one is like, ‘Hey, I need you to pay attention right now.’” They say their phones can easily ruin a cozy evening in. “If we sit down to watch something and one of us is on the phone,” he notes, “we’re not having a movie night together.”
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We pick our battles
After 20 years together, they’ve learned to let things go. “[Early on], if Ben ever did anything that was irking me — like leaving cabinet doors open — I would say something,” says Erin. “But at this stage of our mature marriage, instead of feeling angry when I see something like him leaving his coffee cups everywhere, I immediately think of all the wonderful things he’s done for me and our girls today. And I take his mug and put it in the sink, and I don’t complain.”
Ben’s fast driving and his dropping “piles of boots” around the house don’t thrill her either, but she chooses to not react. “I bet 90 percent of the things that we complain about in our marriages are so unimportant,” Erin adds.
We honor the things that brought us together
Going back in time keeps them connected, too. “It’s important to remember what you loved about each other when you first met,” says Erin. “Try to remember it every single day.”
The two enjoy sharing throwback photos and anecdotes from their early days as a couple. In December, she
detailed their first few weeks together for her followers. One caption described how she’d had a serious crush on Ben — who was very popular on campus — before they met. “He was such a fun person to watch, to be around,” she wrote. “I wanted so badly to be his friend. He made anyone he spoke to feel like they were special, he sat with the person eating alone. And because of that, I loved him before I even knew him.”
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We’re a team
At the end of the day, Erin and Ben are pushing toward the same goal — a joyful home life with each other and their girls. According to Erin, “You make little decisions every day [in which] you can either decide this makes me happy and I’m going to go my own way—” Ben chimes in to finish the thought: “— or this is what’s best for us.”
“The more you can both pull in the same direction,” Erin adds, “[the more] it makes for a happier marriage.”
For more on Erin and Ben, watch the exclusive video above and pick up the latest issue of Us Weekly — on newsstands now.
With reporting by Andrea Simpson
