Erin Napier remembers the exact moment Ben Napier first “messed up her heart” 20 years ago when they were going to college in Mississippi.
HGTV Hometown takeover star shared a memory on Instagram on Sunday, December 8, to mark two decades of knowing her husband.
“8. December 2004 As of yesterday I have been with @scotsman.co most of my life. It’s a crazy milestone. #loveweek” Erin captioned the post.
Erin, 39, detailed her first meeting with Ben, 41 — whom she married in 2008 — in her 2004 memoir, which included a labrador puppy, wet clothes and an exciting yearbook interview.
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“The day we met, I was on a date with a guy I worked with at the hospital pharmacy — let’s call him Charlie. And I dated him because he looked a bit like Ben Napier, the guy I had a crush on,” she began, before explaining that one day after work she went to Charlie’s house to watch The mystical riverbut her phone continued to explode with messages.
“I kept getting messages from Ben, whom I finally met that day,” she recalled. “He offered to meet me the next day so he could check the brakes on my Volkswagen because I told him that afternoon that motorists were making a strange noise.”
“I didn’t care about my brakes at all, reader,” remarked Erin. “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 walk by and whisper ‘What is he doing with her?’ ”
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But Erin wasn’t the only girl who caught Ben’s eye.
“We agreed to do it after his yearbook photo shoot, and on the morning of December 8, 2004, my friend Kristen told me that she had been texting him all night, too,” she recalled. “And I felt so washed out…I guess he was a flirt that made every girl feel this way, that I imagined being special to him on one perfect day.”
Erin then described a photo for the Jones County Junior College yearbook, which included him standing in a lake while posing with a puppy in his arms and a pipe in his mouth to “look academic and sophisticated,” an outfit that “looked like Robert Goulet.”
Erin and Ben Napier.
Courtesy of HGTV
Ben and Erin Napier’s relationship timeline
“Afterward, in the yearbook room while we were editing photos, he came and sat next to me soaking wet from the lake on the hard plastic and metal chair at my desk,” she wrote. “My heart was filled. At one point we were alone, while I was interviewing him, he leaned closer to me – he smelled so good – and I noticed how straight his teeth were.”
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“My heart started racing now because he tilted his head as if he was going to kiss me, and I really wanted him,” she said. “He came half an inch closer and quietly answered the question I asked him and I knew that was it, and then he stopped. He grinned and said ‘You wanted to let me kiss you.’ ”
“Obviously I denied it, because you can’t fall in love and kiss someone 12 hours after meeting them, can you?” Erin concluded and added: “He sat back in his chair and we finished the interview and he said ‘I’m going to change and then we’re going for a drive.’ ”
After that moment, Erin previously told PEOPLE, “Six days later we decided we were going to get married, and that was it.”
The first two seasons Taking over the hometown, co-hosted by Erin and Ben, are available to stream on Max, with a third season due out in 2025.
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Source: HIS Education