Why HGTV’s Erin Napier Was ‘Scared’ to Bring Ben Napier Home to Meet Her Parents

While Erin Napier was sure of her feelings for Ben Napier shortly after they met, she wasn’t as sure what her parents would think of her new boyfriend.

The HGTV couple met in 2004 as students at Jones County Junior College in Mississippi. “He had a maturity that was beyond 21 years, even though he was still there to have a good time,” Erin gushed during a recent episode of the Talk To Me: The Debra Fileta Podcast. “But I just thought he was the greatest, and I had the biggest crush on him for these reasons and others.”

Erin went on to note that she shares a “close” relationship with her parents, but that wasn’t always the case. “In high school, we didn’t have such a good relationship because I didn’t trust their counsel when I should have,” she shared. “I had some really bad influences in my life, and they were like, ‘These people are terrible for you.’ And I was like, ‘You don’t know.’… And then, it turns out they definitely did know. And so, they never liked any guy I ever dated or that they ever met.”

As a result, Erin said she was “so scared” of her parents meeting Ben for the first time. “I knew Ben on December 7. I brought him to meet my parents [on] December 9,” she revealed, noting that Ben met her mom before meeting her dad.

Turns out, Erin had nothing to worry about. “She loved him immediately. He walked in the room and gave her a big hug like he just belonged there, like he’s always been doing this,” she said. “And then, my dad, he met two days later. Daddy was home and Ben came over, and my dad immediately loved him. And that had just never happened.”

Courtesy of Ben Napier/Instagram

Seeing how Ben interacted with her parents and people on their college campus made Erin fall for him even more. “Immediately, they were like, ‘He’s very good. He’s good.’ And I was like, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure? ‘Cause he’s very poor and also a partier,'” she recalled. “And they were like, ‘No, he’s wonderful. And I couldn’t understand what made them say that about him. I knew I felt that way, but I had had bad judgment as a teenager.”

On the podcast, the couple said they were together for “almost three years” from when they met until they got engaged. “My dad said we could not get married until we had college degrees,” Erin shared, joking that she and Ben would have tied the knot sooner if they could.

Related

HGTV's Erin & Ben Napier Discuss 'Problems' & 'Jealousy' in Their Marriage

Erin and Ben got married in 2008. The couple became parents with the birth of their eldest daughter, Helen, in 2018, followed by daughter Mae in 2021. The duo made their HGTV debuts in 2016 with the premiere of their flagship show, Home Town.

As the couple continues to film Season 11 of Home Town, Erin recently took a break from their busy schedules to give Ben a sweet shout-out on Instagram. “Blue collar and college educated. An artist, but also a mechanic. The biggest and strongest man in the room, who wrote his wife a love letter at 4:30 am,” she captioned the October 13 upload. “Staying up late reading Larry McMurtry, getting up early to plant butterfly bushes for his daughter who wants to hold a monarch in her hands.”

Erin added, “If we ever lost him, he would be 100% irreplaceable. There is not another man anything like him, and I think about this often.”

Home Town, Season 11, TBA, HGTV