Jessa Duggar and husband Ben Seewald’s love story keeps counting on.
Jessa, one of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s 19 children, met Seewald at church when they were 20 and 17, respectively.
“We went up from central Arkansas [where we lived] to the northwest part of the state, where her family lived,” Seewald recalled of his parents and siblings on a May 2025 episode of sister-in-law Jinger Duggar’s eponymous podcast. “We had a connection between our families [in] a mutual friend. We ended up going to her family’s church that Sunday, and that was our first real interaction, which wasn’t much.”
According to Seewald, he “worked together” with his sisters to approach Jessa.
“If I just walked right up and started talking to her immediately, and if I show too much interest, I was afraid that would frighten her away,” he explained. “Oh, ‘[He’s] another fanboy who had seen the show, who wanted to date her.’”
While Seewald had seen episodes of TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, he was interested to actually connect with the reality star offscreen.
“He walked up and said, ‘Is that an iPhone?’” Jessa recalled on the podcast episode. “I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s an old one.’ We said nothing else until your family rolled up at the conference. I was near the registration helping put my siblings into the kids’ programs and you said, ‘Hi, I’m Ben Seewald.’”
At the end of the conference, Seewald asked for Jesse’s phone number to have a “theological discussion.”
Seewald and Jessa courted for 11 months before getting engaged. They wed in August 2014 and went on to welcome five children together.
Keep scrolling for their full relationship timeline:
Fall 2013
When Seewald first started courting Jessa, many of her siblings were suspicious of his intentions.
“There was a little more suspicion, I think, because I wasn’t from their friend group, their circle,” he recalled on Jinger’s podcast in 2025. “I’m this stranger, this outsider. So they were a little more guarded, a little bit suspicious of me.”
August 2014
Seewald proposed after courting Jessa for 11 months.
“We are so blessed to be engaged,” they said in a statement at the time. “God has written an amazing story through our courtship, and another chapter has just begun. We are thrilled to see what the future holds — especially the wedding bells!”
November 2014
Jessa and Seewald tied the knot at the First Baptist Church in Bentonville, Arkansas, which was filmed for a special episode of 19 Kids and Counting.
“We looked back and thought, man, that was perfect. It couldn’t have gone better,” the bride gushed in a confessional.
November 2015
After less than a year of marriage, Jessa announced that she was pregnant. Son Spurgeon was born on November 15.
February 2017
The couple’s second son, Henry, arrived two years later.
May 2019
Jessa gave birth to her first daughter, Ivy, on May 26.
“I think there were so many things that I felt like ‘I totally know how to do this. I’ve been around kids,’ but then when it’s your own kid, it’s totally different. For one, it’s your responsibility, it’s not like, ‘Here, Mom, the kid stinks, change the diaper,’” Jessa later exclusively told Us Weekly of parenthood in 2020. “Waking up in the night, I think that was probably one of the hugest adjustments for me. Feeling that responsibility of checking on their fever and making sure they’re OK. Like, when do I know to go to the doctor?”
Later in 2020, Jessa suffered a pregnancy loss.
July 2021
Jessa and Seewald’s rainbow baby, daughter Fern, was born on July 18.
December 2023
After another miscarriage earlier that year, the couple welcomed son George into their family.
March 2025
Jessa announced that she is pregnant with baby No. 6.
“If you asked me right now [if we were done having kids], I would say yes, but we’ve [said] that ever since three kids,” she said on Jinger’s podcast the following May. “It’s been like, ‘This is the last one,’ and then about a year and a half [or] two years later, I’m like, ‘Babies are just so cute. We need to have just one more.’”
