How Did the Duggars Start Courting? See Each Couple’s Love Story

For people whose courtship announcements make first page news, the Duggars' romantic lives aren't actually as public as they want you to think. Sure, their television show, Counting On, may occasionally show them going on (chaperoned) dates or getting engaged, but you're usually not getting all of the insider details. The good news, though, is that the Duggar couples are still happy to share — at least on their own terms.

In addition to the Duggar family blog, most of the kids who've coupled up have their own blogs where they share recipes, cute pics of their kids, or meaningful bible passages. But they also all share some of the lesser known details of their courtships, engagements, and marriages. Think you know everything about the Duggars? Check out the gallery below to find out all hidden details about the Duggar family love stories.

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Jeremy met Jinger through Jessa and Ben who he met through a mutual friend.

Talk about three degrees of separation. It was chance that had a mutual friend suggesting a church fellowship event at Jeremy's house to Jessa and Ben while they were just randomly in San Antonio, and further luck that they stayed in touch enough for Jeremy to later come visit the family — and meet Jinger. But she mostly flew under the radar for him until he watched her video testimony online.

"I had known she was a godly young woman… but we had never really interacted on more than a surface level," Jeremy wrote on the Vuolo's blog. "I remember watching her testimony video that she had made with Ben and thinking, 'Wow. This girl is amazing.'" He reached out to Jessa and Ben to find out more, and when he found out she was really just as meek as she seemed (he literally describes her as "humble," "meek," and "modest" before getting to intelligent), he was hooked.

Jessa and Ben first bonded over an old iPhone.

And it was a super romantic exchange that went a little something like this: "Is that an iPhone?" Ben said he asked on the Seewald family blog. "Yeah, but it's a really old one." Wow, we can feel the magic. But Ben did, apparently, because he immediately set out to become better friends with Jessa's brothers Josiah and Joseph so that he'd have a reason to come visit the family — and get to know the Duggar daughter better.

"I would text Josiah and say 'Hey Josiah, I'm thinking about coming up to visit this weekend. Are you and your whole family going to be there?'" he wrote. "I wanted to make sure Jessa would be there before I drove four hours there and four hours back just for a few hours of church and fellowship on a Sunday."

Oh, and part of their love story involves a side note about how Ben was cramping while riding a bike, blew off Jessa, and flew right past Jim Bob before having to come back fifteen minutes later to properly introduce himself. "I biked speedily along (trying to get back to the water and bananas or any type of anything that I thought would stop cramps.)…I started moving rapidly toward my family's campsite, which was nearby the Duggars' when out walked Jessa's Dad from around the corner. He smiled and said hello. …no firm handshake..no time…pain…those cramps hurt."

Jill and Derick met years before they started courting — but both of them forgot about it.

Though Jim Bob was the one who eventually set them up, they actually met by chance before that when Derick and some of his fellow churchgoers stopped by the Duggars' house to sing carols over the holidays. Clearly, it wasn't memorable, though, considering neither made an impression on the other. Jim Bob and Derick's relationship, though, seemed to flourish. And that's where Jill came back into the picture, learning about Derick through her dad — and through her dad and Derick's phone calls.

"I listened in on a few phone conversations with my dad without Derick knowing I was doing so," Jill wrote on the Dillard family blog. But the light stalking didn't stop there. She also straight-up Googled him to see what other info she could find. After that, while listening in on the phone call, Jim Bob pretended like she'd just walked into the room and picked up the other extension and the two finally got the chance to actually talk to each other, and a few months after that they even exchanged numbers.

Anna saw Josh on TV before they ever met in person.

And it was way before 19 Kids and Counting was ever even a thing. But she heard about the Duggars first when she was 13 and they had just 13 kids (this, by the way, is the only time you can appropriately use the word "just" before saying that a family has 13 kids). Not long after, once the Duggars had added their 14th kid to the family, Anna caught their first TV special, 14 Children & Pregnant Again! And of course, she noticed Josh right away. "I noticed how Joshua, then age 16, shared the importance of guarding his heart and waiting for someone who would really love him and wasn’t going to just get carried away with their emotions," she wrote on the couple's old blog.

Anna may have noticed Josh first, but she was hardly the one to make the first move. Even after they finally met in person, Josh knew right away how he felt while it took Anna some more time to open up to the idea of it. "As we talked, I felt God speak to my heart that this was the girl I was going to marry someday!" he wrote about their first conversation. Thought it may have been love at first sight for Josh, the couple courted for years before getting engaged when Anna turned 20, the age her dad set as the bare minimum for getting married.

Joe gave Kendra a ring way before they ever got engaged.

The Caldwells and the Duggars seem like they've known each other for forever, but Joe didn't really take notice of Kendra until relatively recently. It was only a year after his family started going to her father's church that she began to catch his eye, but things quickly became serious. According to Joe and Kendra's blog, deciding whether or not they wanted to court was such a big decision that Joe actually "fasted and prayed" before he ever even approached Kendra's parents to just ask if he could get to know her better.

They didn't start courting until after they'd become best friends and been talking for months, but when he popped the question, he really popped the question. He got Kendra's dad's permission first (obviously), but then took Kendra to an auto auction and then to where his old house used to be. "This was the area where I started my life… and I was wondering if you would want to start a new part of life with me by entering a courtship?" he asked — and even had a promise ring on hand to seal the deal.