19 Kids and Counting star Joy-Anna Duggar detailed her four-year age gap with husband Austin Forsyth\u2014who she married when she was 19, and he was 23\u2014on sister Jinger Duggar Vuolo's podcast.<\/p>\n
Joy-Anna Duggar isn't counting the years between her and husband Austin Forsyth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 19 Kids and Counting couple shares a four-year age gap, having tied the knot when Joy-Anna was 19 while Forsyth was 23, in a televised 2017 wedding. But the 28-year-old recently explained her feelings for her future husband blossomed much earlier.\u00a0<\/p>\n
"We actually met when we were really young," Joy-Anna told sister Jinger Duggar Vuolo on an Aug. 19 episode of the Jinger & Jeremy Podcast, noting, "I was 4, and he was 8 when they moved up from Texas."<\/p>\n
Still, their love story would take some time to get started after the 32-year-old's family switched churches.<\/p>\n
"His family, they had visited wherever we were having church," Joy-Anna continued. "Then they went and had a different church, and we didn\u2019t see each other very often."<\/p>\n
However, Austin's love for sports\u2014a shared hobby with his wife's brothers Josh, 38, John-David, 36, Joseph, 31 and Josiah, 29\u2014ultimately brought them back together.<\/p>\n
As Joy-Anna recounted, "He got his driver\u2019s license and started playing football and broom ball with the boys," adding that soon after, "I was 14, he was 18 when I started crushing hard."<\/p>\n
And though the divide between the couple isn't wide in years, Jinger gave insight as to why family members took note of the difference when they started dating following Joy-Anna's 18th birthday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
"I always think you and Austin are further apart in age than you are," the 32-year-old shared, adding of her sister's age at the time she got married, "Just because I remember you being so young."<\/p>\n
But Jinger can relate to her younger sister's marriage, as she's also in an age-gap relationship with husband Jeremy Vuolo.<\/p>\n
"We also have an age gap. Jeremy is six and a half years older than me," Jinger remarked. "It's a bigger age gap, but I think yours felt a little bit more significant because you were younger."<\/p>\n
While the difference in years hasn't been a deterring factor, Joy-Anna did stress all marriages take work, especially when scheduling their lives with kids Gideon Forsyth, 8, Evelyn Forsyth, 5 and Gunner Forsyth, 3.<\/p>\n
As she put it, "Marriage, it is so fun, and it can be easy if you're married to the right person, but there also are things that you have to both grow in."<\/p>\n
"You think, 'Oh, it's just going to be happily ever after,' when in reality you do have to put work in," she said. "You have to grow. You have to communicate."<\/p>\n