PEOPLE Chip & Joanna

By Meredith Corporation

As Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna Gaines make their greatly anticipated return to TV with their own Magnolia Network, they speak exclusively to PEOPLE in a new special edition, Chip and Joanna: Building Their Future. Inside an issue devoted entirely to the creative world of the Waco, Texasbased design duo, they share an inside look at their new series, Fixer Upper: Welcome Home; Joanna's new cooking show, Magnolia Table; their most memorable renovation stories; and much more. In a new interview, the couple open up about what brought them back to TV, raising five children during a tough year, and their latest creative projects at the Silos in Waco and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Meredith Corporation
• Release date: Jul 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781547859474

Book preview

Chip & Joanna

THE NEXT CHAPTER

THE FIXER UPPER STARS TALK ABOUT FAMILY, NEW BEGINNINGS AND CREATING A TV NETWORK DURING A PANDEMIC

BY LISA RUSSELL AND EMILY STROHM

A NEW LOOK Chip and Joanna Gaines after a renovation reveal on Fixer Upper: Welcome Home. Says Jo: The design that happens in these homes is truly inspired by the home and the homeowner.

CAN YOU IMAGINE Evel Knievel on a Tuesday afternoon after retirement? asks Chip Gaines, invoking the famous 1970s motorcycle stunt performer as the ultimate restless retiree. He’s probably freaking out. Turns out, being a daredevil—even one who thrills with a hammer rather than a chopper—is really addictive."

That’s one reason that three years after Chip and wife Joanna Gaines closed the front door on Fixer Upper, the HGTV megahit that launched their home-renovation empire, the pair have returned with Fixer Upper: Welcome Home—and their very own network to go with it.

The couple designed Magnolia Network from the ground up. Discovery just said, ‘Hey, we trust you with the creative,’ says Jo. They dived into the task two years ago with the same creativity and attention to detail that they used to build their hugely successful Magnolia lifestyle brand. What we’ve been working on is, ‘How do we build this thing around people, their stories, their passions?’ says Joanna, describing their programming philosophy. We realized that what we loved, as a company and as a business, is the idea of curating stories and letting storytellers be part of this kind of a bigger picture.

Much bigger. To assemble their dream lineup, the pair called upon old friend and Fixer Upper’s favorite woodworker, Clint Harp, and got him on board for a historic-restoration show. They looked down the list of people we had social media crushes on, as Chip puts it, and offered that diverse array of creative talents the opportunity to host their own TV shows—among them, plant expert Hilton Carter, chef Erin French, who overcame hardship to launch one of the country’s hottest restaurants, and Johnnyswim, the married musical duo who perform Fixer Upper’s theme song. (See Meet the Storytellers, page 36). Coming from a wide variety of backgrounds, the network’s new stars share a common story of following their bliss and taking on life with strong intentions. They were at a cliff at some point and had to kind of jump off into the abyss to realize what was possible, says Chip. The recurring theme on Magnolia Network’s roster is risk, passion, inspiration, adds Joanna. [Our hosts] had a dream, they went for it, and now we get to follow along on that journey and cheer them on as they go.

If that appealing narrative sounds familiar, it’s because it’s largely the same one fans of Chip and Jo fell in love with as they watched the couple, then a small-town contractor and a decorator with a thing for shiplap and subway tiles, set off on a journey with the debut of Fixer Upper in 2013. It would lead to stardom and the success of their Waco-based lifestyle brand, which today encompasses bestselling books, the magazine Magnolia Journal (which, like People, is owned by Meredith), home-product lines at Home Depot and Target, and the Silos retail and restaurant complex in Waco that attracts 35,000 visitors in a typical week.

But by 2017, after five seasons of filming their show for 11 months out of the year while raising four children, Drake, now 16, Ella 14, Duke, 13, and Emmie Kay, 11, and with another son soon to arrive—Crew, born in 2018—the Gaineses admitted they needed a break and announced that the fifth season of Fixer Upper would be the last. We gave everything we had to this show—the beautiful homes and those sweet families, Joanna told People at the time. This just felt like the right time to catch our breath for a bit. Chip agreed. For us, being on TV was never the end-all. . . . The show was demanding time from me, and I needed to be giving it to our business, to our relationship and my family.

In the first two years they welcomed baby Crew and refocused on their Magnolia Foundation charity, and that respite from daily filming allowed the idea for a new network to sprout and grow. The goal of an October 2020 launch date, however, was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, they pressed on with filming, putting the necessary safety precautions in place. When we came back, we all had to come back smarter and more wily, says Joanna. I think what [the lockdown] taught all of us is that there’s one way to do production that we’re all used to, but then there’s another way of [saying], ‘How can we be extra creative? How can we be problem solvers? How do we still tell a really great story but in a unique way and in a way that we’ve never thought about before?’

That sort of creativity was necessary at home too. Joanna and Chip were readying Magnolia Network and Fixer Upper: Welcome Home at a time when working parents across the country were moving office operations to their homes and working alongside children attending school remotely. Even amid the comfort of their 3,600-sq.-ft. farmhouse in Crawford, Texas, the Gaineses’ work-life balance adjusted accordingly. I think our kids experienced this robust family time despite the fact that we’d obviously picked up a really big, complicated additional part of our working experience, says Chip. Contrary to it taking time from the family, Jo and I have somehow figured out how to manage this stuff.

For Chip and Joanna, working at the kitchen table also provided a front row seat to their children’s own growth and personal development. When they get a little older and they’ve got actual personalities and things are really going on at school and relationships are starting to develop—Jo and I, oddly, we just love this season of life, says Chip. It was a turbulent season, to be sure, as the pandemic spread, social unrest erupted on the streets, and, in Texas, severe winter storms closed stores and damaged homes. But at the Gaineses’ dinner table, the family processed the day’s news together. We love to wrestle with the kids about big topics, says Chip. [When] something will happen in the world, we’ll try to discuss those things because we just want it to be a safe place for our kids to say, ‘We’re scared of this’ or ‘We’re worried about this.’ We say, ‘We get that, that we don’t know all the answers, but the world is not perfect and is a scary place in some cases.’

Another immutable fact of parenthood: Your kids grow up fast, whether you want them to or not. I cannot believe these little humans are . . . Our oldest­—son Drake—is driving a real, live automotive vehicle to and from places! Chip says. "Most people are like, ‘It’s the scariest thing and so