Doin' it for the 'gram! Chip Gaines says he had no idea an Instagram video of his bikini-clad wife Joanna Gaines would go viral. "I had to kind of beg her," the Fixer Upper star, 48, says of the short clip featured in a carousel of pics and videos from their 18th wedding anniversary trip to Mexico. In it, wife Joanna, 45, wears a two-piece swimsuit and plunges backwards into a private pool.
Surprising no one other than the couple, the sultry moment (ultimately posted by Joanna) went viral. "It was so funny," Chip says in a new interview with Deadline, "I thought no one would care." National outlets and social media watchers quickly took notice, of course.
"My friends started texting screenshots of me in that swimsuit," says Joanna in the same Deadline feature. "And I was like, 'Oh, OK. Noted. Don't do that.' I don't know if that is something you ever get used to. We feel like we're pretty normal people from Waco."
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In other shots from the Instagram reel of their romantic vacation, the couple pose sweetly by the beach, Joanna beams in a tropical sundress as she walks across the sand, they send a nighttime message to their 5 children ("Hi kids! We miss you!"), and Chip is seen lounging in a poolside chair. The highlight, though, is Joanna's viral plunge, in which she holds her nose and splashes backwards..
"18 years," Joanna's caption reads. "Thankful to be on this adventure with you—happy anniversary chip gaines."
"Normal" claims or not, the couple, who recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of both their wedding and the launch of their home renovation business, are now bonafide multi-media moguls with their own TV network, magazine, product lines, and Waco, Tex.-based stores and restaurants all under the brand now known as Magnolia.
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"I think what's been cool about us — and what I'm proud of — goes back to that sort of naive position of when we got into this. We didn't look at something we thought was successful and then try to emulate it; try to reproduce it," Chip adds. "We are completely original and completely authentic."
Their latest professional milestone is related to TV and streaming: Magnolia Network's parent company, Warner Bros Discovery, moved them under the HBO and HBO Max umbrella, which means that fans can watch Fixer Upper re-runs alongside scripted, super-premium HBO fare like The Sopranos, The Last of Us, The Wire and more.
"But to be in the company of those legendary writers and producers, and then here’s our little family network stapled to the back. We feel like a fly on an elephant’s rear end," Chip gushes of the honor.
When they're not running their multi-million dollar empire, the couple are parents to kids Drake, 18, Ella, 16, Duke, 14, Emmie, 13, and Crew, 4. Scroll below for more pics from their 2021 anniversary trip.
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