Why Joanna Gaines Refuses to Upgrade Her Wedding Ring

Celebrity / TV

Chip and Joanna Gaines have been married since 2003. Here’s what Joanna Gaines revealed about why she will never upgrade her wedding ring. Chip Gaines’ proposal to Joanna Gaines Chip and Joanna were engaged roughly one year after they started dating. Chip had to be a little sneaky so he could surprise Joanna. He didn’t …

Published on July 28, 2020

Chip and Joanna Gaines have been married since 2003. Here’s what Joanna Gaines revealed about why she will never upgrade her wedding ring.

Chip Gaines’ proposal to Joanna Gaines

Chip and Joanna were engaged roughly one year after they started dating. Chip had to be a little sneaky so he could surprise Joanna. He didn’t want her to know he was about to propose. According to Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas’ book, What Makes a Marriage Last, he tricked Joanna into thinking she was going to a concert. Instead, Chip took Joanna to a jewelry store and proposed there.

In The Magnolia Story, Joanna says she couldn’t believe Chip would go to so much trouble for her. “I just about melted,” wrote Joanna. “The shopping center was closed, so we had the whole store to ourselves. The jeweler was a man named Billy Holder, who had gone to high school with Chip’s dad, and they’d worked this whole thing out in advance. The fact that the selection of the ring tied back to Chip’s roots and family history made it all the more special for me.”

Chip said he let Joanna pick her ring because he knows she’s opinionated. He figured she wouldn’t like whatever he chose. “Even back then, I was smart enough to know you were real opinionated,” wrote Chip. “If I’d gone and picked the ring out myself, I could literally have seen you going, ‘Hey, I really do love you, and you and me are gonna work out fine, but there’s no way that’s the ring I’m gonna wear.”

Chip offered to upgrade Joanna’s wedding ring

Chip and Joanna were married on May 31, 2003. Chip offered to upgrade Joanna’s wedding ring, but she refused. For their 12th anniversary, Chip surprised Joanna by consulting the same jeweler who helped them design Joanna’s first ring.

Holder came to their home with a selection of diamonds and told Joanna to pick whatever she liked. “I looked [the jeweler] in the eye and I said, ‘I’m sorry, but no. This is the original diamond I picked, and it’s perfect just the way it is.’”

Why Joanna Gaines refuses to upgrade her wedding ring

Joanna has a sweet reason for not allowing Chip to buy her a new ring. “My ring is part of our story,” Joanna tells Donahue and Thomas. Chip borrowed money from his mother so he could purchase the ring. “We didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend, and thankfully we weren’t buying diamonds in Beverly Hills,” wrote Joanna in The Magnolia Story. “I was able to pick out a nice round diamond and a beautiful, antique-looking platinum setting.”

Joanna says a new, expensive ring doesn’t seem to fit her and Chip’s story. “If I looked down at my hand and saw a more expensive diamond in that setting, it somehow wouldn’t fit,” wrote Joanna. “I would know that we couldn’t have afforded that diamond back when we first got engaged. The story wouldn’t add up.”

Read more: Joanna Gaines Didn’t React the Way Chip Expected When He Said ‘I Love You’

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