Joanna Gaines Shares Her ‘Sweetest’ Memory With Her Father

Getty Joanna Gaines and Chip Gaines pose together in 2019.

Former HGTV star Joanna Gaines has a cooking show called “Magnolia Table with Joanna Gaines.” On the show, the famed home renovator shares recipes with her audience. During an April 2021 appearance on the “For the Love” podcast, hosted by Jen Hatmaker, star of “Your Big Family Renovation,” Gaines discussed her love of food.

Joanna Gaines Shared That She Used To Bake With Her Father

On the “For the Love” podcast episode, Joanna Gaines shared that her mother, Nan Stevens, was not overly fond of cooking. 

“My mom moved here when she was 19 from Seoul, Korea and she was so young that she honestly didn’t know how to cook Korean food. So she comes to America and never really honed the skill of like cooking American food,” explained the “Fixer Upper” star. 

Gaines went on to say that she “can remember like three things” that her mother would cook. 

“It was spaghetti. It was this hot dogs and rice, which is kind of a thing, it’s funny. She like made hot dogs and rice like a Korean meal for us because she put a bunch of Korean pepper on it. And then like meatloaf. That’s it. My mom, she’s so funny because even now she doesn’t want to cook because she doesn’t want her home to smell like food,” said Gaines. 

The mother-of-five shared that her father, Jerry Stevens, “had a sweet tooth,” which inspired him to bake with his daughter.  

“He was like, ‘If we leave it up to mom, we’ll never have dessert,’ so me and my dad would get in the kitchen and we would do chocolate chip cookies together and so that’s my memory with my dad that I think is the sweetest is like me and my dad in the kitchen, trying to make chocolate chip cookies,” said Gaines. 

The television personality also shared that she would cook with her paternal grandfather. 

“My grandfather was Lebanese and my grandmother was German, they had nine children, they were all about gathering, being together, and then these really rich family meals and so I would always beg my granddad, ‘would you teach me how to make this?'” said Gaines. “So he only taught me like three things but those three times I was with my granddad were really the only three times I was actually with my granddad because there was always so many people around and he was such a quiet man. But those three times in the kitchen like marked me.”

She then noted that each time she “cook[s] those recipes it’s like in honor of him.” 

Joanna Gaines Revealed Chip Gaines Was Initially Not Fond of Her Cooking

During a 2018 interview on “Today,” Joanna Gaines shared that her husband and “Fixer Upper” co-star, Chip Gaines, was not fond of her cooking when they were first married.

“It’s funny because in the beginning, when it was just me and Chip, I remember that I tried to cook a few meals for Chip and he was not impressed, so we actually ate out a lot,” shared the 43-year-old.

Gaines revealed that after the birth of their fourth child, Emmie Kay, in 2010, the couple “realized  it was a lot harder to go out to eat with four kids” and she began cooking more.  

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