'Fixer Upper' Star Joanna Gaines Reveals Rare Photo of Parents in Veterans Day Message

We see where Joanna Gaines gets it! The Fixer Upper star took time on Veterans Day to honor her [...]

By Anna Rumer

We see where Joanna Gaines gets it! The Fixer Upper star took time on Veterans Day to honor her father, Jerry Stevens, with a sweet social media tribute.

Alongside a photo of dad Jerry and mom Nan Stevens sitting atop an army vehicle in Seoul, South Korea, Gaines paired a more modern father-daughter photo and a touching caption.

"Happy Veterans Day and thank you to all who served and sacrificed for this beautiful country of ours. And to my favorite Veteran of all, my dad and my hero. I love you," she wrote, adding the hashtags #army and #seoulkorea.

Gaines' parents have been married more than 45 years and have a love story rivalling Joanna and Chip Gaines', as revealed in her book, The Magnolia Story, after meeting at a party in Seoul.

"Interesting enough, the way my mother tells it, she spotted my dad sitting off by himself in a corner at that party and said to a friend of hers, 'That's the man I'm going to marry,'" Gaines wrote. "Her friends thought she was crazy, but she says she just knew."

When Jerry moved back to the U.S. a few months later, the two kept in touch via letter, and Jerry sent her a plane ticket just a few months later with a marriage proposal. Despite their parents' disapproval, the two were married by a justice of the peace in Las Vegas in 1972.

It wasn't easy sailing in the first few years, prompted by cultural differences, Gaines continued.

"From what they've told me, they actually had a rocky marriage for several years," she wrote. "There were times, they say, when they didn't think they would make it because all they did was fight."

When Jerry's mother died, things turned around for the duo.

"He envisioned himself in a casket, with his family surrounding him, and it hit him just how wrongly he was living his life," Gaines wrote. "He knew he didn't want to end up in that casket the way he envisioned, leaving my mom alone to fend for herself."

They went on to build their family and raise Joanna, and years later "they've never been stronger."

Photo credit: Twitter/Joanna Gaines

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