Love at First Sight: HGTV Star Reflects on First 24 Hours with Husband
Movieguide® Contributor
HOME TOWN TAKEOVER star Erin Napier is feeling sentimental as she recalls her first day with Ben Napier.
“December 8, 2004. As of yesterday I’ve been with @scotsman.co most of my life. That’s a crazy milestone. #loveweek” Erin captioned in a post on Instagram Sunday.
“On the day we met, I had been on some dates with a guy I worked with at the hospital pharmacy — let’s call him Charlie. And I was dating him because he looked a little bit like Ben Napier, this guy I had a crush on,” she began.
She went over to Charlie’s place to watch MYSTIC RIVER when her phone started blowing up.
“I kept getting texts from Ben, whom I’d only finally really met that day,” she wrote. “He was offering to see me the next day so he could check the brakes on my Volkswagen because I’d told him that afternoon, a car guy, they’d been making a weird sound.”
“I did not care about my brakes at all, reader,” Erin noted. “I wanted him to lean against my car in the dorm parking lot and tell me about himself while he easily ignored the other girls who would pass by and whisper ‘What is he doing with her?’”
READ MORE: THIS HGTV COUPLE HAS THE SWEETEST LOVE STORY
But at that time, Ben wasn’t ignoring other girls.
“We agreed to do that after the photoshoot of him for the yearbook, and the morning of December 8, 2004, my friend Kristen told me she’d been texting him all night too,” she said. “And I felt so washed out — I guess he was a flirt who made every girl feel this way, that I had imagined being special to him for one perfect day.”
Then they did the photoshoot, which involved Ben standing by a lake and holding a Labrador puppy with a pipe in his mouth — to look “sophisticated.”
“Afterward, in the yearbook room while we were editing photos, he came and sat beside me soaking wet from the lake in the hard molded plastic and metal chair at my desk,” she wrote. “My heart filled. At one point once we were alone, while I was interviewing him, he leaned in closer to me — he smelled so nice — and I noticed how exactly straight his teeth were.”
“My heart raced now because he tilted his head as if he would kiss me and I wanted him so badly,” she said. “He came half a inch closer and was answering the question I had asked him quietly and I knew this was it and then he stopped. He grinned and said ‘You were gonna let me kiss you.’”
She was but denied it.
“You can’t fall in love and kiss someone 12 hours after meeting them can you?” Erin stated. “He leaned back in his chair and we finished the interview and he said ‘I’m going to change clothes and then let’s go for a drive.’”
Just six days later, they knew they would marry each other. So they did. The rest is history.
One of Ben’s favorite things to do for Erin is leave her typewritten letters every day.
Erin shared a photo of a whole box of them.
She said, “One day the girls will get his letters to me and they’ll get to know Ben so well because of them. my favorite thing about this small and huge thing he does every morning while we’re all asleep.”
Ben and Erin’s show, HOME TOWN TAKEOVER is bringing in its third season May 2025.
In this new season, they’re transforming Sebring, Florida, “a beautiful lake town.”
“Renovating one house at a time is an awesome experience. But the chance to support an entire town, where we help bring a community back to life — that’s something we’ve always wanted to try,” Ben said.
READ MORE: HOME TOWN SEASON 8 IS ‘JUST AROUND THE CORNER!’
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