Joanna Gaines Jokes About 'All Those Years I Was a Bit of a Dud’ to Chip as She Embraces Her Adventurous Phase

The Magnolia Network star reveals she has a “dream barrel race” among other daring new hobbies in this week’s cover story

In early October, Joanna Gaines signed up for her first riding lesson. “I have a dream of barrel racing,” the Magnolia Network star tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story.

Yes, it’s a rodeo event where a rider tries to circle a set of drums in a cloverleaf pattern in the fastest possible time. At the professional level it can be around 15 seconds.

“Maybe we should call it a barrel trottingshe retorts.

While Joanna may not be the perfect cowgirl—in fact, she admits, she’s “terrified” of horses—the sport is the latest in a series of adventurous hobbies she’s taken up.

Joanna Gaines and son Crew, 5, harvest 10 gallons of honey from bees on their property in Waco

joannagaines/Instagram

Last year it was beekeeping, because of which she faced another fear in her life. “Now we have bees here on the farm and that’s my favorite thing,” she says. In August, she and her youngest son, Crew, 5, harvested ten gallons of honey on their property in Waco, Texas. (They also share Drake, 18, Ella, 17, Duke, 15, and Emmie, 13.)

Before that, she rediscovered her childhood love of rollerblading and started racing around their Waco farm and even on the set of her cooking show. Now she and husband Chip, 49, are producing a roller-skating dance competition show that will debut in early 2024 on Max.

Joanna Gaines/Instagram

All the most romantic (and hilarious) Chip and Joanna Gaines throwback photos

Fans The upper part of the fixator and its spinoffs know the designer, 45, as the sensible, reserved half of the celebrity couple, compared to Chip’s natural prankster. But it is a yoke that Joanna is consciously trying to free herself from.

“I say, ‘Yeah, I’ve got a kid in college, I’ve got a five-year-old, and I want to does things.’ I don’t want to wake up [one day] and say: ‘I have worked.’ I want to wake up and say, ‘Everything you said you always wanted to do, did you do it?'” she explains.

Kimberly Salmon

Her outlook on life began to change when she wrote her memoirs, The stories we tell. “I think that trip brought a lot of healing and wholeness. And so when you wake up feeling a little more whole than the day before, you see the world differently,” she says.

It also changed the way she viewed herself in the past and allowed her to joke about her old habits.

Courtesy of Magnolia Network

“It’s more fun to be married to Chip than to Joanna. So I’m sorry for all those years where I was a bit of a bum,” she says with a laugh to her husband of 20 years.

“You’ve been a stick in the mud for a long time,” Chip adds with a smile. “You’re really starting to catch your second breath.”

Chip and Joanna Gaines envisioned ‘something much simpler’ for their lives before Magnolia

Courtesy of Magnolia Network

Chip, for his part, has willingly slowed down in his prankster way lately. “I feel like Benjamin Button, like Jo and I are in this beautiful moment, kind of passing each other.”

“You rubbed me the wrong way,” observes Joanna.

Chip is more than happy to be her “cheerleader”. “It’s fun to watch your partner grow and develop, get stronger and better,” he says. “I’m so proud of her.”

For more on Chip and Joanna Gaines, pick up this week’s issue of People, on newsstands Friday.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education