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Where Are Ben and Erin Napier From? Inside the HGTV Couple’s Upbringings and Where They Live Today
Ben Napier and Erin Napier are best known for restoring homes on their shows Home Town and Home Town Takeover. Fans are curious about where the fixer-uppers are from and where they reside today amid their success on HGTV.
Where Are Ben and Erin Napier From?
Ben and Erin Napier both grew up in Mississippi. Erin was raised on her family’s farm five minutes outside the city limits of Laurel, Mississippi.
“I had never lived anywhere else before going to college,” she shared in 2018. “My days were spent working on art projects with mama, or building tents with my grandparents, or exploring parks in town. I wanted to get out of south Mississippi.”
Meanwhile, Ben was born in Collins, Mississippi, about 30 minutes away from Laurel. “As a United Methodist minister’s family, we moved around a lot,” he shared. “I finished high school in North Carolina.”
Where Do Ben and Erin Napier Live?
Ben and Erin moved back to Erin’s hometown, Laurel, after their wedding in 2008.
“We had talked about living in Memphis or Birmingham, maybe going to Nashville,” Erin admitted in 2022. “We even discussed how magical it would be to go to New York City and live and work for a little while. I think the stigma [of returning home] is that it’s a sign of giving up. ‘Oh, you settled. Oh, you couldn’t cut it and you were too scared to go to the big city so you came back.’ The more rebellious thing is going home. When you’re young, you think the world is so much better if you could just get away from home. That the grass is always greener. But it’s just not. Everywhere has problems.”
By 2018, the couple embraced the small town life in Laurel. “Laurel is unlike most small southern towns I’ve lived in or visited,” Ben explained. “It’s a very industrial town that was founded in the late 19th century. The founders were educated and cultured, two things that became a part of their industrial town. Laurel is as much industrial blue collar as it is artistic and creative.”
In 2021, Ben noticed a listing for Erin’s dream home in Mississippi. They bought the country home and took on renovating it for themselves. Although they kept their original house, they bought the new residence as a “hideaway” for the family – Ben and Erin have two daughters – to get away to on weekends.
“I grew up on a 40-acre chicken farm and would pick out a baby chick to be my bet every time a new load would come,” Erin explained. “My playtime consisted of climbing a lot of trees and digging for arrowheads in the woods. That’s not something our girls can do in town. I want their bathwater to be dirty at the end of the day, so it means they weren’t just playing on screens.”
Where Did Ben and Erin Napier Meet?
Ben and Erin met while attending Jones County Junior College in Ellisville, Mississippi, in 2004.
Erin admittedly wanted to go to Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, as it was her dream to get out of Mississippi. However, she was waitlisted, which led her to the place where she eventually met Ben.
After they started dating, Ben and Erin transferred to The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), which is in Oxford, Mississippi, together. They got engaged there during their last semester of college in 2007 and tied the knot on campus in 2008.
