HGTV Star Erin Napier Responds to Ben Napier Divorce Rumors

Home Town star Erin Napier is setting the record straight on her and Ben Napier’s marital status.

Amid ongoing rumors that the HGTV couple is splitting after 17 years of marriage, Erin took to social media Tuesday to quickly shut down the divorce rumors.

“Can’t believe I even have to say this but NO, the click bait articles that we are splitting up are not real, y’all,” Erin, 39, wrote on her Instagram Stories. “They are AI generated in India or something and don’t even make any kind of sense. Y’all are smarter than this.”

In a second post, she pleaded with her fans to keep her and Ben’s two children, daughters Helen, 7, and Mae, 4, out of the rumors, writing, “and please don’t ask about it in front of our babies. they don’t understand what ‘online fake news’ means and it’s upsetting.”

Erin and Ben have been happily married since 2008. The couple, who have starred alongside one another on their HGTV series Home Town since 2016, first met in 2004 while they were both students at Jones County Junior College in Ellisville, Mississippi.

“On December 7, 2004 @scotsman.co and I met in our college yearbook room about the feature story we were writing about him,” Erin recalled in a December 2019 Instagram post. “For two years [I] had noticed him, always the center of attention, everyone’s best friend, my biggest crush. Dec. 8, we took the photos for the yearbook. Dec. 9, we went on our first date, and he met my mama. Dec. 10, we looked at the Christmas lights in Mason Park. Dec. 13, we decided we would get married someday.”

Three years after first meeting, Ben dropped to one knee and popped the question in a bookstore in Oxford, Mississippi in September 2007. The couple went on to tie the knot at the University of Mississippi’s Paris Yates Chapel the following year, and later welcomed their daughter Helen in January 2018 and Mae in May 2021.

Reflecting on their years-long relationship, Ben told Us Weekly earlier this year that “communication is a key element in a happy marriage. The vast majority of our job is a director saying, ‘Hey, that just happened — give me some thoughts on it.’ We ping-pong off each other.”

The couple can currently be seen restoring homes throughout their hometown of Laurel, Mississippi in HGTV’s Home Town. The show premiered in 2016 and just wrapped its ninth season in June. In January, it was announced that the Napiers renewed their deal with HGTV, extending the series for 32 more episodes shooting through 2027.